I have branches, but no fruit, trunk or leaves. What am I?

What does man love more than life, hate more than death or mortal strife; That which contented men desire; the poor have, the rich require; the miser spends, the spendthrift saves, and all men carry to their graves?

I never stop running even when I standstill. If I am formed by joining two identical bodies together, can you guess who I am?

If you drop me I’m sure to crack, but give me a smile and I’ll always smile back. What am I?

I never was there, I am always to be.
You have never ever seen me, not ever you will.
Yet I am the confidence of everyone.

Who Am I?

A girl says this to her best friend: “I was born in 1955, and I celebrated my 17th birthday last weekend.” Her best friend thinks she’s lying, but she’s actually correct. How is that possible?

How can one talk without saying a single word?

When Jack was six years old he hammered a nail into his favourite tree to mark his height. Ten years later at age sixteen, Jack returned to see how much higher the nail was. If the tree grew by five centimetres each year, how much higher would the nail be?

I ask Joseph to pick any 5 cards out of a deck with no Jokers.

He can inspect then shuffle the deck before picking any five cards. He picks out 5 cards then hands them to me (Jack can't see any of this). I look at the cards and I pick 1 card out and give it back to Joseph. I then arrange the other four cards in a special way, and give those 4 cards all face down, and in a neat pile, to Jack.

Jack looks at the 4 cards i gave him, and says out loud which card Joseph is holding (suit and number). How?

The solution uses pure logic, not sleight of hand. All Jack needs to know is the order of the cards and what is on their face, nothing more.

I am a word that begins with the letter “i.” If you add the letter “a” to me, I become a new word with a different meaning, but that sounds exactly the same. What word am I?