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PRECIS WRITING
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PASSAGE –1

Speech is a great blessing but it can also be a great curse, for a while it helps
us to make our fellows, it can also, if we use it carelessly, make our attitude
completely misunderstood. A slip of the tongue, the use of an unusual wood, or of an
ambiguous word, and so on, may create an enemy where we had hoped to win a
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fiend. Again, different classes of people use different vocabularies, and the ordinary
speech of an educated man may strike an uneducated listener as showing pride;
unwittingly we may use a word which bears a different meaning to our listener from
what it does to men of our own class. Thus, speech is not a gift to use lightly without
thought, but one which demands careful handling; only a fool will express himself
alike to all kinds and conditions of men.
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Precis: The Gift of Speech

Speech is a valuable gift. But to express our thoughts and feelings we must use
it carefully otherwise we may be misunderstood and turn our friends into foes. We
should not ignore the fact that words do not always mean the same thing to the
educated and uneducated men. Words, must therefore, be used with great caution
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and tact.
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E G V FLOOR, Dr. MUKHERJEE

533, GROUND EGV EGV
NAGAR, NEW DELHI 110009
9540-55-0011, 9540-55-0022 1
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PASSAGE – 2
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Among the manifold misfortunes that may befall humanity the loss of health is
one of the severest. All the joys which life can give cannot outweigh the sufferings of
the sick. Give the sick man everything and leave him his sufferings and he will feel
that half the world is lost to him. Lay him on a soft silken couch, he will nevertheless
groan sleepless under the pressure of the sufferings, while the miserable beggar
blessed with health sleeps sweetly on the hard ground. Spread his tables with dainty
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meats and choice drinks, and he will thrust back the hand that prefers them and
envy the poor man who thoroughly enjoys his dry crust. Surround him with pomp of
kings; let his chair be a throne, and his crutch a world-saying scepter; he will look
with contemptuous eye on marble, on gold, and on purple, and would deem himself
happy, could he enjoy, even were it under a thatched roof, the health of the meanest
of his servants.
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Precis: Blessings of Health

The loss of health is the greatest misfortune that a man can suffer form. No
pleasure of the world can soothe and comfort a sick man. A sick man passes
unhappy days and sleepless nights. Everything, howsoever sweet and pleasant it may
be, appears to him insipid and tasteless. Instead of having the kingdom of the whole
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earth with his sick health he would prefer the humble lot of a poor but healthy
beggar. So great are the blessing of health that all the riches of the world pale into
insignificance before them.
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533, GROUND
E G V FLOOR, Dr. MUKHERJEE
EGV NAGAR, NEW DELHI
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9540-55-0011, 9540-55-0022 2
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PASSAGE – 3
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When I go into a stranger’s library, I wander round the book-shelves to learn
what sort of a person the Stanger is, and when he comes in I fell that I know the key
to his mind and the range of the interests. A house without books is a characterless
house, no matter how rich the Persian rugs and how elegant the settees and the
ornaments. The Persian rugs only tell you whether he has got money, but the books
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tell you whether he has got money, but the books tell you whether he has got a mind
as well. It is not the question of money that we don’t buy books, I repeat that books
are the cheapest as well as the best part of the equipment of a house. You can begin
your library with the expenditure of a couple of shillings. Nearly, all the best
literature in the world is at your command at two shillings a volume. For five pounds
you can get a library of fifty books. Even if you don’t read them yourself, they are
priceless investment for your children. What delight is there like the revelation of
book, the sudden impact of a master, spirit, the sense of window flung wide open to
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the universe? It is the adventures of the mind the joy or which does not pass away,
that give the adventure of life itself beauty and fragrance.

Precis: The importance of Books

A man is known by the books he reads. Books are an index to the mind and
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the interests of a person. A person who has no library of his own is poor, no matter
how rich his furniture may be. Books are so cheap nowadays that one can have a
moderate library within the small sum of five pounds. The money spent on books is
never waste. Even if the owner does not avail himself of his books, his children will
read them with profit. There is no pleasure like the pleasure of enjoying good books;
and what is more, one always gains in knowledge and wisdom by studying the works
of great writers.
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E G V FLOOR, Dr. MUKHERJEE

533, GROUND EGV EGV
NAGAR, NEW DELHI 110009
9540-55-0011, 9540-55-0022 3
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PASSAGE – 4
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What can poetry do for us? What useful purpose is saved by reading a medley
of poems of all kinds and all ages? Why is there no end to the making of anthologies?
Isn’t a newspaper account of a football cup or a Test Cricket, a far more splendid epic
to be devoured with outmost eagerness than all Milton’s purples patches which bore
us unspeakably? Those are very natural questions which, after all, a young reader
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might ask. The only answer that can be given is that poetry is not a means to
anything. It is one of the simple goods of life and no more needs to be vindicated than
contemplation of a sunset or the intercourse of friends. Laughter and tears,
adventure and romance, thought of life and death. – all these are the stuff that go to
make up life.
The poet tries to expand the life of a man. He wants to make it more full and
real. Life interests and excites, but he does not copy it as a historian does. Poetry is
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not worthwhile, if it is a mere imitation of life. It is rather a criticism of life. The poet
sees into the life of thing. He has a keeper sensibility to interpret a creation, groaning
and travelling after its proper meaning. Our imaginations, according to WB yeast, are
but fragments of the universal imagination and as we enlarge our imagination by
imaginative sympathy and transform with beauty we become immortal men.
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Precis: The Function of Poetry

Poetry, in the real sense of the term, interprets life; rather it is a criticism of
human life. It enlarges man’s life and creates a new world in which man finds himself
spiritually as well as intellectually elevated. It makes us immortal by enlarging our
imagination through imaginative sympathy.
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533, GROUND
E G V FLOOR, Dr. MUKHERJEE
EGV NAGAR, NEW DELHI
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9540-55-0011, 9540-55-0022 4
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PASSAGE – 5
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You hear every day greater number of foolish people speaking about liberty, as
if it were such an honourable thing. So far from being that, that, it is on the whole,
and in the broadest sense, dishonorable and an attribute of the lower creatures. No
human being, however great and powerful, was ever so free as a fish. There is always
something that he must or must not do while the fish may do whatever it likes. All
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the kingdoms of the world put together are not half so large as the sea, and all the
railroads and wheels that ever were, or will be invented, are not so easy as fins. You
will find, on fairly thinking of it that it is his restraint which is honourable to man,
not his liberty and what is more, it is restraint which is honourable even in the lower
animals. A butterfly is more free than a bee; but you honour bee more just because it
is subject to certain laws which fit it for orderly function in bee society. And
throughout the world, of the two abstract things, liberty and restraint, restraint is
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always the more honourable.
It is true, indeed, that in these and all other matters, you never can reason
finally from the abstractions for both, liberty and restraint are good when they are
nobly chosen; but of the two, I repeat, it is restraint which characterizes the higher
creatures and betters the lower creatures; and from the ministering of the archangel
to the labour of the insect, from the poising of the planets to the gravitation of a grain
of dust – the power and glory of all creatures and all matters consist in their
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obedience, not in their freedom. The sun has no liberty. Its liberty will come – with its
corruption.

Precis: Liberty and Restraint

Restraint is a greater virtue than liberty. Liberty is a characteristic of the lower
creatures; but man is not, like the fist, free to do whatever he likes. Even in the lower
creatures, restraint is more honourable than liberty. We honour the bee which is
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subject to the laws of bee society more than the butterfly which is free to move.
However, both liberty and resistant are good when nobly chosen. But restraint
characterizes the higher creatures and raises the lower ones. All the objects in the
universe obey certain laws. Even the sun and the dust of which our body is made,
know no freedom.
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E G V FLOOR, Dr. MUKHERJEE

533, GROUND EGV EGV
NAGAR, NEW DELHI 110009
9540-55-0011, 9540-55-0022 5