English 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.

According to the passage, what took Tolstoy forty years to discover?

In the following question, out of the given four alternatives, select the one which is opposite in meaning of the given word.

Banter

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, choose the word which is opposite in meaning to the given word and click the button corresponding to it.

SQUANDER

Improve the bracketed part of the sentence.
When I first saw Ankit, he (was playing) cricket.

A sentence has been given in Active/Passive Voice. Out of the four given alternatives, select the one which best expresses the same sentence in Passive/Active Voice.

She made a very remarkable observation. 

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

Angry or bitter disagreement over fundamental issues

We can think of (often confused in the public minds) P (which suggest the need for) Q (two factors) R (an international language) S

The correct sequence should be

Out of the four alternatives, choose the one which can be substituted for the given words/sentences and click the button corresponding to it.

Belong to the same period