Quotes by Sri Lankan Authors - Page 3

When the time has come, every leaf turns to face the sun!It doesn't know if it has to, but because the call has reached it:Not knowing what to expect, it will, move slightly, twist patientlyand try to embrace whatever is coming! It might be too strong, it might be too weak, it also might just be perfect!
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Her ghost is still orbiting Earth inside the tiny dim lit room. Orbiting endlessly like an invisible moon circling our beautiful blue planet.
Gayendra Abeywardane
History is the archaeology of the present and future.
Patrick Mendis
The evolution of national unity and equal rights is all about what America represents as a nation today: a manifestation of the historical episodes of Jefferson and Henry as well as the Civil War, the Women’s Suffrage movement, and the Civil Rights struggles.
Patrick Mendis
To achieve the ultimate Confucian objective—a virtuous society—America has favored the rule of laws over Confucian-style virtues.
Patrick Mendis
If American misjudgments and actions that evolved into human tragedies—i.e., racism, sexism, and other bigotries—are guiding lights, the Chinese leadership must ultimately yield its power to the sovereignty of its people.
Patrick Mendis
A convergence exists in the search for human excellence on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
Patrick Mendis
There are seemingly parallel origins of Nature’s God in America and China’s Mandate of Heaven. These twin concepts created socio-political forces for public good and orderly governance, and a unique cultural ethos (related to the Creator of the Universe in America and the Son of Heaven in China) is deeply rooted in both societies. Each concept is physically yet stealthily manifested in the architectural designs of the two capital cities, Beijing and Washington.
Patrick Mendis
China seems to have skillfully adapted a Monroe Doctrine, or “Ménluó” (a transliteration of the word “Monroe”) Doctrine, in America’s backyard.
Patrick Mendis
As Pacific Ocean nations, competition and cooperation between the two nations will create a new atmosphere—leading to the Birth of a ‘Pacific’ New World Order—that is more engaging and less confrontational; this can be characterized by the presence of force without war.
Patrick Mendis
We do not have to dig deep into history to understand the reality. The examples of Saddam Hussain, who was executed after a sham trial and the case of Muammar Gaddafi, who killed after surrendering in broad daylight, have given enough factual reality to understand the painful truth.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
What we can see in most societies is the gravity of suffering, tears of sorrow and nightmares of hopelessness.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Mr. President; give me back my country. Allow people to have their humanity. If you do not do this, history will never absolve you!
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Let us applaud the howls of the ignorant extremists as we stand on a knife-edge, not glad, but in acknowledgement of the bad, sad, mad gifts that the regime continue to offer us.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
We are not subjects of an autocratic King, but are citizens of the country contributing to the advancement of our people who pay taxes out of their hard earned income.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
We are citizens who love to fake life than dig deep into our reality to discover the truth and make amends and correct our own wrongdoings, because we are reluctant to learn from our past.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Will there be people who will have the conscience to contribute to the country by changing themselves first? That is the need of the moment.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Life in this form is one-time chance, death is the inevitable consequence for anyone who is born. The record of one’s death is the primary respect one could render to the lost one. Tears of all relatives of missing people are indeed flowing due to this invaluable action by the authority.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
-I think you are inhuman. If I leave you, who will you go to? Would you find another lover?I said nothing.-Deny it,damn you!
Michael Ondaatje
I went mad before he did, you killed everything in me. Kiss me,will you. Stop defending yourself.
Michael Ondaatje
And after that until the end, there was no relief from being a girl with chores that she wasn’t being paid for, a girl with no new sandals and a friend who wasn’t a friend but a mistress, and a family that wasn’t but people who owned her and ordered her about, and nothing at all but her pretty breasts and her round bottom and her misbehaving hair to help her feel any different.
Ru Freeman
At one point in your life you have to decide whether you want to become a sachem or a solitary.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Though the man-apes often fought and wrestled one another, their disputes very seldom resulted in serious injuries. Having no claws or fighting canine teeth, and being well protected by hair, they could not inflict much harm on one another. In any event, they had little surplus energy for such unproductive behavior; snarling and threatening was a much more efficient way of asserting their points of view.
Arthur C. Clarke
...how many of us have a moved heart that shies away to a different angle, a millimetre or even less from the place where it first existed, some repositioning unknown to us.
Michael Ondaatje
How we are almost nothing. We think, in our youth, we are the centre of the universe, but we simply respond, go this way or that by accident, survive or improve by the luck of the draw, with little choice or determination on our part.
Michael Ondaatje
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
Arthur C. Clarke
Happiness is a choice, a repetitive one.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Don't be nervous..be Excited....
gayan fonseka
One physician may gravely exaggerate an illness and give up hope altogether. Another may ignorantly declare that there is no illness and that no treatment is necessary, thus deceiving the patient with false consolation. You may call the first one pessimistic and the second one optimistic. Both are equally dangerous.
Walpola Rahula
You can be clumsy yet clever. You can be classy yet poor. It's not tearing a leaf off a calendar which will make you a better or a worse man but the attitude that you have from dusk till dawn every day.
Indeewara Jayawardane
Love and betrayal comes hand in hand.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal which had forgotten to learn and a robot which had never known to forget.
Arthur C. Clarke
As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.
Arthur C. Clarke
Now times had changed, and the inherited wisdom of the past had become folly.
Arthur C. Clarke
It is a smokescreen if someone believes that they can make change without identifying the root causes which influence social disorder.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
True, the US Government does not have moral authority to ask for an independent investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity that occurred in final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka. This is so not just because of what they have done in Sri Lanka, but what they do all around the world. Certainly, the US enhanced their assistance in many ways during last decades to fight against the Tamil Tiger rebels. But does the Government of Sri Lanka have moral authority to deny an international investigation? The answer is no.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
What unified the Balochis in their quest to regain self-determination, which resulted in the ‘existing state’? On the one hand, authoritarianism, militarization, and conquest has robbed them of their history and put them into the do or die situation. On the other hand, natural resources which would allow the citizens at large to achieve a respectable existence have been controlled by the military or political elites, well connected to feudal political elites in Pakistan.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
When man lost touch with his humanity he had no reason to walk along the higher path.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
We have created our own fake world in order to satisfy our imagination through the illusion.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Mr. President, not only are you disastrous for the land, you are the man who must be held responsible for all the sins of the cowards, the cowards who were fooled into electing you as president.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
We lost our country somewhere along the way. We know where we lost it but we do not appear to have the strength to eliminate those blocking our view to enable us to develop our common identity.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Mr. President, it is time for you to give me back my country. You can either continue to make fools of the people who elected a tyrant like you or let the country rise phoenix-like from the ashes.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The man on the top of the hierarchy has created social fear in order for us to accept him as the leader.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The tyrant has power to play as long as he is the master in his surroundings.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka, knows exactly how the political bluff works and uses it to spread lies among the people. What he has done to this country is assassinate the dignity and respect of good citizens while centralising everything into himself and his family members. His ego may lead him to think that it will last forever so to keep his dream alive he will not hesitate to eliminate the person who questions this.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
All it takes is common sense to understand that the Rajapaksa administration has vandalised every layer of the country’s resources to get rid of political obstacles while minimising the space available to facilitate the sharing of authentic political dissent. At the same time the opposition appears to be caged.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
That the military have the power to manipulate personal liberties while cocking a snook at justice and freedom in Balochistan is a fact.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
We as human beings need freedom, and justice, and a true cause to engage in to make life meaningful. This basic and comprehensive dream cannot be allowed to be shattered under any circumstances; if it starts shattering then the resistance will arise. The elimination of torture and other practiced cruelty needs to be effected for there to be freedom and justice. It will guide us in our search for a secure place to enjoy personal liberties.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The decrease in the number of killings doesn’t make any difference if the society has to sleep with the ghosts of the old devil.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The government of Pakistan is yet to understand that the insurgency is not the disease but the symptoms of the disease. If the government really needs to cure the crisis in the area, then it must engage in genuine treatment procedure rather than engage in ad hoc solutions that go under the motto: picked up, killed, and dumped. Kidnapping the target and dumping his or her bullet riddled and tortured corpse in a public place to scare the people in the area is a military strategy which aims to provide a lesson to those who still retain seeds of resistance. If this is the only solution that the government is capable of then it will have to commit genocide against the people of Balochistan so that it can continue to steal their natural resources and have total control of the province.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
As things stand the "intellectuals" only come out to lick the bones left over by the tyrant.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Patriotism, currently, is nothing but the deadly evolution of narrow minded politics which has distorted language.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Social systems are neither a consumer product that we can buy or rent from the market nor a material that we can import from another country. It is not a creation of the almighty gifted from the heavens. A social system is a creation of mankind. That is a reflection of our responsibilities. In other words, the social system is the result of our behavior and the decisions we take in our way of life.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for us to change the mindset which has tended to create ad hoc solutions for the political madness and social farce. In fact, our age of tragedy which has been represented by the so-called “Marxists” in the Sinhalese community and “liberalists” in Tamil community since the 70s to the late 90s, has been replaced by the age of farce.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Fear has become normal and is covered by the idea of “patriotism”.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
America acknowledged the greatness of Confucius through a trio of ancient lawgivers—Moses flanked by Confucius to his right and Solon on his left—on the monument to “Justice, the Guardian of Liberty” displayed on the eastern pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.
Patrick Mendis
Everybody put on masks, including you and me. We all wear masks.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
People do not change. It is just that they change the masks they wear and the acts they put on, with new costumes, new dialogues and new settings.That is human nature.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
But the people only talked about how ugly her face looked. No one even bothered to mention what a sweet, kindhearted girl she was. Now, don’t be amazed! That is just the nature of humans, to notice the one flaw among a person’s ten good qualities.
Janaki Sooriyarachchi
I am someone who has a cold heart. If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall.
Michael Ondaatje