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Figures of Speech Exercise 2
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Directions:Each item below contains figurative language or is a figure of speech. Read each one and decide on the correct interpretation of it.





1"Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't planted
—David Bly
A)It is important to strive for success.
B)You should plant crops where you plan to harvest them.
C)It is wrong to work hard for success.
D)To be successful, you must first work hard.



2"Opportunity makes thieves." —European saying
A)People steal at every opportunity.
B)People who might not otherwise steal may do so if circumstances make it easy to take something.
C)Some people never have opportunity to become a thief.
D)Don't leave valuable possessions lying around.



3"'Tis with our judgments as our watches: none go just alike, yet each believes his own."
A)We all have different opinions, and each of us thinks ours is correct.
B)We need to watch the judgments we make.
C)We should not believe other people's opinions.
D)We should not make judgments about other people because over time, people can change.



4"Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live."
—Holmes Rolston III, professor of philosophy (1932- )
A)It is just as wrong to destroy a species as it is to tear pages out of a book, especially a book written in another language.
B)Humans should not tear pages out of any book that is written in a language they do not understand.
C)When humans destroy a species, they and future generations lose forever the opportunity to learn something about the very earth on which they live.
D)Humans should record in a book the species they destroy.



5"Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it." —Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)
A)It is helpful in life to be able to speak a second language, even though speakers will undoubtedly mispronounce some words.
B)Everyone will mispronounce the words of a foreign language.
C)No one knows how to live life perfectly, and every person makes mistakes in living their lives.
D)Because everyone mispronounces some words of a foreign language, there is no reason to try to learn another language.



6"True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess." —Louis Nizer, lawyer (1902-1994)
A)How we conduct our lives, and not what we say we believe, reflects our true religious beliefs.
B)Each person must find a religion that is truly appropriate for him or her.
C)To be truly religious, we should learn the creeds that our religion professes.
D)It is important to learn a religious creed and to act accordingly.



7"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward."
—Vernon Law, Pirates pitcher
A)It's a helpful experience to have a hard teacher.
B)Experienced teachers give the lesson first and then the test.
C)Everyone has the experience of making mistakes both in school and in life.
D)Experience can be a difficult way to learn because you learn from making mistakes.



8"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." —John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)
A)It's a good idea to have at least a dozen rabbits.
B)Once ideas start coming to you, you have lots of more of them.
C)Unless you have an idea of how to handle rabbits, you will end up with lots of them.
D)No one knows how many ideas or rabbits they will end up with after getting the first one.



9"The best university of all is a collection of books." —Thomas Carlysle
A)All universities should have a large book collection.
B)Reading books can provide a person with an excellent education.
C)A university can be judged by the size of its book collection.
D)People who want to attend a university should first read a large collection of books.







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