The Answer to the Great Question Of†Life, the Universe and Everything†Is†Forty-two.

-Adams, Douglas Noe«  l
  The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ch.27.

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask:Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

-Arnold, Matthew
  The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems,'Shakespeare'.

To ask the hard question is simple.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  Poems, no.27.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'The Unknown Citizen'.

No wonder the really powerful men in our society, whether politicians or scientists, hold writers in contempt.Theydoit becausetheyget no evidence from modern literature that anybody is thinking about any significant question.

-Bellow, Saul
  Interview in The Paris Review, no.37, winter issue.

In Atlanta, the first question is'What's your business?' In Macon, it is 'Where do you go to church?' In Augusta they want your grandmother's maiden name.But in Savannah, the first question is'What would you like to drink?'

-Berendt,John
  Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. 154

-Bronowski,Jacob
  The Ascent of Man, ch.4.

Vous savez ce qu'est le charme: une manie'  re de s'entendre re¤  pondre oui sans avoir pose¤   aucune question claire. You know what charm is: a wayof getting theanswer yes without having asked any clear question.

-Camus, Albert
  La Chute (translated by Stuart Gilbert).

Sometimes you have to learn how to give the right answer to the wrong question.

-Christopher,Warren Minor
  On Syrian President Hafez  Assad's complaint that he had been put off by a hostile question in a news conference shared with President Clinton. In US News and World Report,19 Dec.

Politics are much discussed, so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet peopleavoid the question of the Presidency†the great constitutional feature of this institution being, that directly theacrimonyof the last election is over, the next one begins.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
  American Notes.

Consider Ireland. Thus you have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Churchöand in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish Question.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Speech, House of Commons,16 Feb.

You've got to ask yourself a question, "Do I feel lucky?". Well do you, punk?

-Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry
  As Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (screenplay by Harry Julian Fink, Rita M Fink and Dean Riesner).

Le colonialisme accule le peuple domine¤   a'   se poser constamment la question: 'Qui suis-je en re¤  alite¤  ?' Colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: 'In reality, who am I?' f

-Fanon, Frantz Omar
Les Damne¤  s de la terre ( The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington,1965), ch.5,'Colonial War and Mental Disorders'.

Nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes itto disappearor tomerge insomething else.

-Forster, E(dward) M(organ)
  A Passage to India, ch.8.

I never met anyone in Ireland who understood the Irish question, except one Englishman who had been there only a week.

-Fraser, Major Sir Keith Alexander
  House of Commons, May.

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States.Eachsuburbanwifestruggledwith it alone. Asshe made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at nightöshe was afraid to ask even of herself the silent questionö'Is this all?'

-Friedan, Betty (Elizabeth) Naomi ne¤  e  Goldstein
  The Feminine Mystique, ch.1,'The Problem that has No Name'.

The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'The Oven Bird'.

   Question not, but live and labour Till yon goal be won, Helping every feeble neighbour, Seeking help from none; Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone: in another's trouble, in your own.

-Gordon, Adam Lindsay
KINDNESSCOURAGE1866  'Ye Wearie Wayfarer: Hys Ballad. In Eight Fyttes', in Bell's Life in Victoria, Nov1866, collected in Sea Spray and Smoke Drift (1867).

The poet is the unsatisfied child who dares to ask the difficult question which arises from the schoolmaster's answer to his simple question, and then the still more difficult question which arises from that.

-Graves, Robert von Ranke
Recalled on his death,7 Dec1985.

   I didn't know Whoöor whatöput the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someoneöor Somethingöand from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

-Hammarskjo«  ld, Dag HjalmarAgne Carl
Va«  gmarken (translated by L Sjsy«  berg and W H  Auden as Markings,1964).