Question

Do you think telling lies, whether a little or a lot, isn’t that big of a deal? Well, that depends on the situation. If someone asks, “Does this dress make me look fat?” we might all lie. We might say, “Of course not. You look great.” Lying to spare someone’s feelings is one thing. Lying to destroy(毀壞) someone’s character is another.

“What’s really terrible is that you can’t cancel a big lie,” says a man we’ll call Morgan. “I promise if you go house to house to say, ‘I feel terrible I wrongly charged my neighbor with stealing,’ the lie will spread like a fire. You can’t call back a lie very easily.”

Morgan goes on to say that lies have hurt people more than guns.

“We have a grandfather in our church whose son-in-law told people the man treated his own children badly,” Morgan says. “To this day, we don’t know whether it is true or not. I would doubt it, but I can’t take a chance, especially if he is working with young people in our church.”

“I worked with a man who was stealing money from our boss,” says a man we’ll call Fred. “He was good at lying and doctoring the books (做假賬). I worried, ‘If I turned him in, and he got out of the trouble, my career at our company would come to an end.’”

Fred says he came up with a plan to drop hints (暗示) to the company owner. “I found printed materials on the dishonest worker. I started mailing them to the company owner without leaving my name. Then one day, over lunch, I told my boss he should have the books checked carefully. He got the hint.”

Fred told us that when the books were checked, the dishonest worker tried to blame him for the mistakes. However, Fred told the company owner he had been dropping hints for some time. The boss got the picture. Fred kept his job. The dishonest guy was sent away.

How to make a liar(說(shuō)謊者) public takes work. It can be done, but you might have to give others time to accept the truth. The slower you move, the more control you will have.

1.The underlined phrase “spare someone’s feelings” in Paragraph 1 can be replaced by

A. destroy someone’s feelings B. avoid hurting someone

C. put someone in a bad mood D. express someone’s ideas

2.Which of the following can be used to conclude Paragraph 2?

A. It’s no use crying over spilt milk. B. Every man has his misses.

C. There is no smoke without fire. D. Pride goes before a fall.

3.How does the author develop this passage?

A. By listing numbers. B. By comparing.

C. By giving examples. D. By following order of time.

4.What can we know from the passage?

A. It was true that the grandfather treated his own children badly.

B. It is not difficult to let a dishonest man tell the truth.

C. Fred’s boss believed the dishonest worker’s words and sent Fred away.

D. To make a liar public, we should find out useful ways first.

Answer 1