PATIENCE
Patience is better than wisdom: An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains. All men praise patience, but few can practice it. It is a medicine which is good for all diseases, but it is not every garden that grows the herbs to make it wit. Many people are born crying, live canola; fining and die disappointed. They think, every other person’s burden to be light and, yet if the truth were known, it is their own feathers to be heavy as lead, and fancy rather than their fate that makes things go so hard with them. Many would be well off they could but think so.
1. Which of the following is the most suitable explanation for the author’s remark that ‘an ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains’?
 (a) Intelligence and wisdom can be attained only by practising patience.
(b) Patience comes first, intelligence next.
(c) Patience is essential for every achievement in life.
 (d) Without patience, intelligence cannot be used properly.
 2. Which one is the most likely explanation, among the following, of the author’s metaphorical statement that ‘it is not every garden that grows the herbs to make it with’?
 (a) Patience is a must for solving all our problems in life.
(b) Patience is a rare herb that cures all diseases.
 (c) Patience is quite difficult to practice.
(d) It is only a small number of people that are found observing patience in life.
 3. The writer’s remark “They think every person’s burden to be light and their own feathers to be heavy as lead” is very significant. It means
(a) they are always worried and dejected.
(b) they consider their own problem to be difficult to solve as compared with the problems of other people.
 (c) they feel that they alone face serious problems while others have a nice time.
(d) they remain very much worried about their own problem.
4. The writer’s remark “It is their fancy rather than their fate” means
(a) they are unhappy because they think that way and not because it is their destiny.
 (b) they are fatalists rather than imaginative.
 (c) they have a wrong approach to life.
(d) they are very much absorbed in their own problems.
ANSWERS:-
1. (b)
2. (d)
 3. (c)
4. (a)
Download the above Passage in PDF (Printable)
