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Sinhalese Quotes

Browse 40 quotes about Sinhalese.

Sinhalese Quotes

“Primitive veddhas moulded images of women with full-blown breasts and legs. This was not to evoke sensuous pleasure, but as symbolic images related to their faith in religious fertility rites with the aim of increasing their return from harvesting and hunting. The modern artist magnifies the breasts of the woman in a painting in order to derive and to evoke erotic pleasure. That is how vulgarity enters their art.”

ArtPleasureVillageSinhaleseSrilankaUprooted
Book:Yuganthaya
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“The urban capitalists and the bourgeoisie differ in linguistic habits and dress from the workers. They don't live together in one integrated society, but as two separate societies that speak different languages both literally and metaphorically. The urban capitalists do not know the life led by workers. Workers experience hardships that are unheard of amongst villagers and these evoke malice in the urban workers, easily stirred by union leaders who use them to ride to power. Villagers are different. Teaching the villagers cannot easily change what they have inherited from the environment and the past they have known and in which they have grown up. The village entrepreneur wore only a sarong in the past. Some of them wore a sarong and slung another over a shoulder. The poor villager's dress is also a sarong. The village entrepreneur speaks Sinhalese, which is the language of the poor villager too. On the day of the traditional New Year, the children of both the rich and the poor in the village eat together and play together in the homes of the villager elite. All this subdues feelings of resentment against the wealthy villagers. It's true that villagers suffer a great deal on account of their poverty. But unlike the urban poor, poverty amongst the villagers does not incite malice toward the wealthy, due to the rural way of life.”

SocietyCapitalismBourgeoisieUrban LifeSinhaleseSrilankaVillage Life
Book:Yuganthaya
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“The few people who work earnestly are those who want to accumulate wealth. They are born with exceptional ability and a drive to reach the top. Even if they life as a worker, they become very wealthy. Had their needs been met at the beginning, they would never have acquired the capacity for hard work and commitment. Why is it that rich men's children fail within two or three generations?”

WealthHard WorkUrban LifeSinhaleseSrilankaCeylonRich Men
Book:Yuganthaya
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“Tissa reflected that religion is divine poetry whilst morality is made up of customs and traditions that change with the place and the times. How do men who read the same books he reads, live on the same kind of food in the same world and social class, differ so much from him and from each other in mind and body? He concluded that his present state of body and mind that gives rise to his reflections cannot be just the outcome of books he read and the food he ate, nor his own efforts to adapt to his world and his social class. Human beings are born with an individuality that is unique to each, but this cannot be attributed to the presence or absence of a soul. The same individuality is there in each leaf, and one leaf differs from another. Yet all the leaves get the same nourishment from the roots of the tree, and the sun and the air.”

HumansCultureSinhaleseSrilanka
Book:කලියුගය
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“An outsider's inquisitiveness to know another's private affairs is natural, but not so in children with respect to their parents. Children know the overt personal life of their parents. It is a crime for children to probe into mistakes made by their parents, like detectives looking for evidence of crimes. Any man can make mistakes, however good he may be. It is wrong for children to inquisitively probe into their parents' lives, and have fun or show anger over what they uncover. It is like digging into the heads of ancient statues in search of archaeological artefacts. Nanda spoke with anger.”

CultureParents And ChildrenSinhaleseSrilanka
Book:කලියුගය
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“It did not occur to Kabalana that the behaviour of these two young men was not a consequence of their education and experiences in England. Kabalana did not have the objectivity in thinking to acknowledge this. What they acquired in England was an education that encouraged independent thought. The social environment encouraged independent thought, but also the expression of such thoughts without fear. The English people have no unchanging past. Scientific knowledge, the Arts and social conventions change even in a matter of weeks and months.”

CultureSinhaleseVillage LifeUprooted
Book:Yuganthaya
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“There's curd, but is it alright to eat curd after eating meat?" asked Weligama Hamine, placing the dish of vegetables in her hands on the table. "Our parents never allowed us to eat curd after meat." "There's no harm in eating curd, Amma," Aravinda said. "It may be a little harmful to eat curd after too much meat. Meats contains essential elements that take time to digest. This is also true of milk. That's why this belief would have grown. If we eat a large quantity of meat without rice, and follow with curd, there is a possibility of indigestion." Weligama Hamine accepted the professional knowledge of her son who had qualified in England. She however, did not abandon her own view completely.”

CultureVillageSinhaleseUprooted
Book:Yuganthaya
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“Her heart filled with boundless love that surged anew for her father. She felt like rushing to him and planting a quick kiss on his cheek the way she used to when she was a small girl. However, these villagers are not in the habit of kissing their offspring after they grow up. They show their love and affection by stroking their heads, addressing them in endearing words and blessing them.”

CultureVillageParents And ChildrenCasteSinhaleseSrilankaDrummersCinnamon Gardens
Book:The Master's Daughter
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“Malin listened to Wickramanayake's gossip dispassionately. He did not accept Wickramanayake's opinion that it was the influence of Western customs and attitudes that prompted Savulugala, in his straitened economic circumstances, to allow his wife to befriend and exploit wealthy men. There were poor people in both town and village who exploited even their daughters to get money. Did these poor parents degrade themselves because they were enslaved by Western culture? It was the prevailing economic and social order that brought them to this.”

PeopleCultureSinhaleseUprooted
Book:Yuganthaya
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“Chamari: "Aravinda, have you been to Kataragama?" Aravinda: "No, I've never been there." Chamari: "What? That's unbelievable for someone born in Deniyaya!" Aravinda: "Going to Kataragama is not a custom of the rural folk. It is the middle class and wealthy urban people, not the villagers, who venerate the Kataragama god. He is the god of the urbanities. The villagers have now started to imitate the urban people." Chamari:"I thought even villagers used to go to Kataragama long ago." Aravinda: "No, It came from the rich urban Sinhalese of the towns who followed the rich Hindus.”

CultureVillageUrbanSinhaleseSrilankaUprootedKataragama
Book:Yuganthaya
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“Families could often trace their lineage back several centuries. Their livelihood was earned from drum playing, a service considered to be dis-respectable. As members of a low caste, the drummers were forbidden to build decent houses. There were allowed to build wattle and daub huts, and to live rent-free on their patrons' properties. The right to own the country's land was restricted in this manner, a vicious condition that arose through tradition and was reinforced by law. Patterns of financial power and political hierarchy existed hand in hand.”

CultureCasteSinhaleseSrilankaDrummersCinnamon Gardens
Book:The Master’s Daughter
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“When he had accompanied his father on drumming errands he noticed how high caste men and women treated them as inferior. They had to enter from the back door and wait near the kitchen or at a side veranda and sit on low benches or reed mats. They were never offered a decent seat. At meals times they were never invited to eat at the main table with the family or other guests. Instead, they had to eat the food served to them on the reed mat. This they ate in silence while the patrons sat at a lavishly laid table and enjoyed their food amidst chat and cheer.”

CultureVillageCasteSinhaleseSrilankaDrummersCinnamon Gardens
Book:The Master's Daughter
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“She believed that people born to low caste families were meant to suffer. That was their karma. She had learnt that those who indulge in sinful activities in their previous birth, especially those who humiliated others, would be reborn to low caste families. She firmly believed also that one has to suffer until the sin was paid for through suffering and good deeds.”

CultureKarmaVillageCasteSinhaleseSrilankaDrummersCinnamon Gardens
Book:The Master's Daughter
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“Maggie was ten years younger than him. Being cross-cousins, they lived in the same compound, in the same two houses that still existed. When their parents told him to take her for his wife, there was nothing for him to think deep into the matter. They simply obeyed their parents. Accordingly, she came over to sleep in his house. In this, manner they remained as man and wife for a period of over thirty years.”

CultureVillageCasteSinhaleseSrilankaDrummersCinnamon GardensCousin MarriageCross Cousins
Book:The Master's Daughter
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“A new movement reinforced by activists such as Buddhist monks, physicians who practised traditional medicine, teachers, farmers, and laborers brought Prime Minister Bandaranaike into the political helm. The leaders of the Davulawatta community considered this election a personal achievement. They saw this as a people's government and appreciated its genuine interest in fulfilling the needs of the common people. They trusted that the present government would eradicate poverty and the caste discrimination, and work to promote self-esteem.”

CultureVillageCasteSinhaleseSrilankaDrummersCinnamon Gardens
Book:The Master's Daughter
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“An urbanite does not become a civilized person just because he has had an education. What one assimilates in the city is book-learning and knowledge derived through emulating educated men. But that alone will not make him a civilized person. A man of simple tastes becomes complex through education because he desires to become complex. That is why a lot of educated men enjoy vulgar and obscene things. The cinema has become a vulgar philistine art form. The enormous motor car with its bloated body is a vulgar vehicle. It is difficult to create a complex thing without some vulgarity and grossness. Amongst the things valued by the educated, it is difficult to find things untainted by vulgarity. People who cannot distinguish between grossness and refinement are not uncommon among the urban educated because for many, the measure of civilization is its complexity.”

CivilizationUrban LifeSinhaleseSrilanka
Book:Yuganthaya
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“Simple and natural things are free from obscenity and vulgarity. The woman who lifts her breasts with a tight fitting brassier only reduces her feminine attractiveness by her efforts. The mature villager today is educated on the folk tales created by his ancestors who had drunk at the fount of experience. He enjoys, perhaps unconsciously, the beauty of woodland, river,rill, brook, montane forest, birds, beasts and fish. His likes and dislikes conditioned by nature are not complex. Simple things are devoid of unpleasantness. So, what he likes is not tainted with unpleasant qualities.”

VillageUrban LifeSinhaleseSrilanka
Book:Yuganthaya
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