There are a great number of people in the world while few people are great.I think there is probably only one great person out of 10，000 at best，and most probably much less than that.
The reason why there are only few of them is that most people do not pay the price of greatness.There are so many people who want to be great，why only very few of them actually pay the price? The answer to the question explains the difference between the almost 100% people who want to be great and the much less than 0.01% who actually be so.The reason is that the road to greatness is full of pains.
Greatness requires sacrifices and there is no sacrifice without pain.The kind of sacrifices required for greatness is the ones that make the process continuously painful for long time.If you only want to be good it may be painful just every now and then，and many people can still handle it.But being great is a total difference.The pain is much deeper and it is continuous，so very few people can endure this kind of pain.Most people naturally choose things that bring pleasures to them.It's unnatural to choose pain over pleasure，let alone doing it continuously for long time.But that's what I believe is the secret to greatness: The secret to greatness is choosing pain over pleasures continuously for long time.
【小题1】What is the purpose of Paragraph 1?A．To pare. B．To list statistics.C．To lead up to the topic.D．To give information.【小题2】If one person only wants to be good，what will he/she face?A．Occasional pains.B．Continual work.C．Constant pains.D．Various difficulties.【小题3】What is the main idea of the passage?A．Pleasures mean greatness.B．Greatness equals sacrifices.C．What's greatness.D．Greatness lies in continuous pains.C
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(答案→)C
解析： 要成为成功人士，就要忍受长期痛苦。
【小题1】C 通读全文，文章由提出问题、分析问题到最后解决问题，所以第一段由伟人和普通人的数量对比来引发中心问题，因此第一段的作用就是引导主题。
【小题2】A 细节理解题。根据第三段第三句“If you only want to be good it may be painful just every now and then，...”可知答案。
【小题3】D 主旨大意题。文章最后一句“The secret to greatness is choosing pain over pleasures continuously for long time.”是文章的主题句。