In this section there are several reading passages followed by
a total of twenty multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark
your answers on your answer sheet. TEXT A The art of living is to
know when to hold fast and when to let go. For life is a paradox: it enjoins us
to cling to its ninny gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment.
The rabbies (犹太人的学者) of old put it this way: "A man comes to this world with his
fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open." Surely we
ought to hold fast to life, for it is wondrous, and full of a beauty that breaks
through every pore of God’s own earth. We know that this is so, but all too
often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember what
was and then suddenly realize that it is no more. We remember a
beauty that faded, a love that waned. But we remember with far greater pain that
we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love
when it was tendered. A recent experience re-taught me this
truth. I was hospitalized following a severe heart attack and had been in
intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place.
One morning, I had to have some additional tests. The required machines
were located in a building at the opposite end of the hospital, so I had to be
wheeled across the courtyard on a gurney. As we emerged from our
unit, the sunlight hit me. That’s all there was to my experience. Just the light
of the sun. And yet how beautiful it was—how warming, how sparkling, how
brilliant! I looked to see whether anyone else relished the
sun’s golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with eyes fixed on
the ground. Then I remembered how often I, too, had been indifferent to the
grandeur of each day, too preoccupied with petty and sometimes even mean
concerns to respond to the splendor of it all. The insight
gleaned from that experience is really as commonplace as was the experience
itself: life’s gifts are precious—but we are too heedless of them.
Hem then is the first pole of life’s paradoxical demands on us: Never too
busy for the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day.
Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute. Hold fast to
life... "but not so fast that you cannot let go." This is the second side of
life’s coin, the opposite pole of its paradox we must accept our losses, and
learn how to let go. This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are
young and think that the world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with
the fun force of our passionate being can, nay, will, be ours. But then life
moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this second
troth dawns upon us. At every stage of life we sustain losses
and grow in the process. We begin our independent lives only when we emerge from
the womb and lose its protective shelter. We enter a progression of schools,
then we leave our mothers and fathers and our childhood homes. We get married
and have children and then have to let them go. We confront the death of our
parents and our spouses. We face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our own
strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggests,
we must confront the inevitability of our own demise, losing ourselves as it
were, all that we were or dreamed to he. But why should we be
reconciled to life’s contradictory demands Why fashion of beauty when beauty is
evanescent Why give our heart in love when those we love will ultimately be tom
from our grasp In order to resolve this paradox, we must seek a
wider perspective, viewing our lives as through windows that open on eternity.
Once we do that, we realize that though our lives are finite, our deeds on earth
weave a timeless pattern. Life is never just being. It is
becoming a relentless flowing on. Our parents live on through us, and we will
live on through our children. The institutions we build endure, and we will
endure through them. The beauty we fashion cannot be dimmed by death. Our flesh
may perish, our hands will wither, but that which they create in beauty and
goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don’t spend
and waste your lives accumulating objects that will only turn to dust and ashes.
Pursue not so much the material as the ideal, for ideals alone invest life with
meaning and are of enduring worth. Add love to a house and you
have a home. Add righteousness to a city and you have a community. Add math to a
pile of red brick and you have a school. Add religion to the humblest of
edifices and you have a sanctuary. Add justice to the far-flung round of human
endeavor and you have civilization. Put them all together, exalt them above
their present imperfections, add to them the vision of humankind deemed, forever
free of need and strife and you have a future lighted with the radiant colors of
hope. (886 words) Which of the following conclusions does the passage support
A.An ounce of wisdom is worth a million tons of books. B.Death makes a contract with everyone, but no one can break it. C.Look on all that appears commonplace as something hard to come by, and we’ll all the more treasure it. D.Own one’s life and know how to treasure it, and this is and happy and beautiful life.