Question

Years ago, when I started looking for my first job, wise advisers said, “Barbara, be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience. ” How right they were!

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is the paste that helps you hang on there when the going gets tough. It is the inner voice that whispers, “I can do it!” when others shout, “No, you can’t!” It took years and years for the early work of Barbara McClintock, a geneticist who won the 1983 Nobel Prize in medicine, to be generally accepted. Yet she didn’t let up on her experiments. Work was such a deep pleasure for her that she never thought of stopping.

We are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder and it is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such youthful air, whatever their age. At 90, cellist（大提琴家） Pablo Casals would start his day by playing Bach. As the music flowed through his fingers, his bent shoulders would straighten and joy would reappear in his eyes. As author and poet Samuel once wrote, “Years make the skin old, but to give up enthusiasm makes the soul old. ”

Enthusiastic people also love what they do, regardless of money, title or power. Patricia Mcllrath, retired director of the Missouri Repertory Theater in Kansas City, was once asked where she got her enthusiasm. She replied, “ My father, a lawyer, long ago told me, I never made a penny until I stopped working for money. ”

If we cannot do what we love as a fulltime career, we can do it as a hobby. Elizabeth Layton of Wellsville, Kan, was 68 before she began to draw. This activity ended her sadness that had troubled her for at least 30 years, and the quality of her work led one critic to say, “I am persuaded to call Layton a genius. ”

We can’t afford to waste tears on “might-have-beens”. We need to turn the tears into sweat as we go after “what-can-be”. We need to live each moment whole-heartedly, with all our senses－finding pleasure in the sweet smell of a backyard garden, the simple picture of a six-year-old, and the beauty of a rainbow.

 

69. The passage mainly shows us_______.

A. enthusiasm is the basic element of everything

B. enthusiasm helps us to succeed to a greater degree

C. enthusiasm makes us experience more life

D. we can do nothing without enthusiasm

70. From the example of the Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock, we may find_______.

A. enthusiasm can encourage us in difficult times

B. enthusiastic people always get a deep pleasure from work

C. you can’t make any achievement if you have no enthusiasm

D. enthusiastic people are sure to gain great fame in the end

71. The unlined sentence “I never made a penny until I stopped working for money.”  in Paragraph Four refers to “________”.

A. I wouldn’t work unless I could make money

B. I believe that my work will be rewarded

C. Working for money is what I love to do

D. Working for money makes no money at all

72. The main idea of the last paragraph is ___________.

A. we should try heart and soul to win what we want

B. enthusiasm can give us pleasure, though we have to sweat

C. we have not enough money to buy what we need

D. enthusiasm with sweat is what we need

Answer 1

69. B       60. A       71. B       72. A