Questions

A passage is given with five questions following it. Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

The saddest part of life lies not in the act of dying, but in failing to truly live while we are alive. Too many of us play small with our lives, never letting the fullness of our humanity see the light of day. I’ve learned that what really counts in life, in the end, is not how many toys we have collected or how much money we’ve accumulated, but how many of our talents we have liberated and used for a purpose that adds value to this world. What truly matters most are the lives we have touched and the legacy that we have left. Tolstoy put it so well when he wrote: “We live for ourselves only when we live for others.” It took me forty years to discover this simple point of wisdom.

Forty long years to discover that success cannot really be pursued. Success ensues and flows into your life as the unintended yet inevitable byproduct of a life spent enriching the lives of other people. When you shift your daily focus from a compulsion to survive towards a lifelong commitment to serve, your existence cannot help but explode into success. I still can’t believe that I had to wait until the “half-time” of my life to figure out that true fulfillment as a human being comes not from achieving those grand gestures that put us on the front pages of the newspapers and business magazines, but instead from those basic and incremental acts of decency that each one of us has the privilege to practice each and every day if we simply make the choice to do so.

Mother Teresa, a great leader of human hearts if ever there was one, said it best: “There are no great acts, only small acts done with great love.” I learned this the hard way in my life. Until recently, I had been so busy striving, I had missed out on living. I was so busy chasing life’s big pleasures that I had missed out on the little ones, those micro joys that weave themselves in and out of our lives on a daily basis but often go unnoticed. My days were overscheduled, my mind was overworked and my spirit was underfed.

Suggest a suitable title for the passage?

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which is the best substitute of the phrase.

the action of making amends for a wrong one has done

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which will improve the bracketed part of the sentence. In case no improvement is needed, select "no improvement".

Gilbert de Lafayette's father and grandfather and great-grandfather (have all been) brave and noble men.

In the following question, the sentence given with blank to be filled in with an appropriate word. Select the correct alternative out of the four and indicate it by selecting the appropriate option.

If you want to secure health you must learn to work without _____.

In the following passage, some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

If there is a subject of really ______________ interest and utility, it is the art of writing and speaking one's own language ___________. It is the basis of culture, as we all know; but it is infinitely more _________ that, it is the basis of business. ___________ salesman can sell anything unless he can explain the merits of his goods in effective language, or can write ___________ advertisement equally effective, or present his ideas, and the facts, in a letter.

subject of really ______________ interest and utility

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

In black and white

In the following question, a sentence has been given in Direct/Indirect speech. Out of the four alternatives suggested, select the one which best expresses the same sentence in Indirect/Direct speech.

My friend said, "I can lift 50 kilos easily."

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

To bite off more than one can chew