14527 greatness
TOEFL-style Essay
ETS GMAT Prompt:
ielts360toefl@hotmail.com
猫头鹰在线写作实验室 谢振礼
>When someone achieves greatness in any field such as the arts, science, politics and business, that person's achievements are more important than any of his or her faults.
ETS Sample Essay: Jeenn Lee Hsieh ielts360toefl@hotmail
To err is human; and to prove this point, some historical claims regarding great persons are irrefutable, meaning that even the most powerful or successful persons are not flawless. So, we must accept greatest people with faults in any field such as politics, the arts, science, and business. Most men and women who stand out among the crowds are not perfectly rounded in their personalities, but are instead people whose one driving enthusiasm is so great that it makes their faults seem insignificant or forgotten.
To begin with, "greatness" does not always mean "goodness". In fact, many stories about great people, particularly rulers in the political field, have a cruel side. For example, Qin Shi Huangdi, China's first emperor in the third century B.C., ruled his empire ruthlessly, using death as the only punishment for disobeying his laws. Joseph Stalin, one of the most powerful men in modern history, was probably one of the most evil men of all times. No less evil was Adolf Hitler, who started World War III in Europe and ordered the killing of millions of Jews. These stories were typically about great people with great faults, not to mention the atrocities of Genghis Khan, Anna I of Russia, Rome's fifth Emperor Nero, Tsar Ivan the Terrible, King Leopold II of Belgium, among others.
It is said that "only great people can have great faults", and this quote is not confined to the political field. That said, one thing that all these great persons and others have in common was not morality, but determination--that kind of enthusiasm which drove them to greatness beyond the restrictions of mainstream moral behaviors. For instance, Albert Einstein was said to be not much a family man, and rumor had it that he was a brilliant sex maniac. In other fields as well, music or painting in and of itself cannot have a moral dimension because a single moral dimension does not exist, and because a piece of music, or an object of painting, cannot have morality. Likewise, because morality and profit seldom go hand in hand, the most successful men and women in the business sector often sacrifice morality for profit. This is probably why a person's achievements are usually considered as more important than any of his or her faults.
As a conclusion, great people's achievements seem to have been built on their determination which might go to such an extreme that morality, even humanity, might not exist. Accordingly, many of their faults have not been remembered so well as their successes in different fields. For that matter, history will tell. (Essay by Jeenn Lee Hsieh ielts360toefl@hotmail.com 谢振礼老师 pigai zuowen)
