Quotes by Sri Lankan Authors - Page 8

Victor of course never failed to fire a monster joint on these underground missions. And there he would sit reading. He liked how those books made him feel, the books and the weed, his brain humming with knowledge, an odd and lovely sort of expansion feeling these threads of words that stretched across continents and decades, a sort of feeling that he, too, was stretched and flattened, his brain spread like a map across the world.
Sunil Yapa
This book is a story, and like all stories, it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.
Michael Ondaatje
This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.
Michael Ondaatje
Science is great for us. But for someone who see the human evaluation for more than one million years, science is a just a one instant and younger than a baby.
Muditha Champika
Science is great for us. But for someone who sees the human evaluation for more than one million years, science is just a one instant and younger than a baby.
Muditha Champika
Science is great for us. But for someone who sees the humans for more than one million years, science is just a one instant like a baby trying to talk.
Muditha Champika
This is only a work of fiction , The Truth as always will be far stranger
Arthur C. Clarke
…once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization…
Arthur C. Clarke
There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.
Arthur C. Clarke
Meteorites don’t fall on the Earth. They fall on the Sun and the Earth gets in the way.” - John W. Campbell
Arthur C. Clarke
It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.
Arthur C. Clarke
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke
Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.
Arthur C. Clarke
How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean.
Arthur C. Clarke
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
There were, however, a few exceptions.One was Norma Dodsworth, the poet, who had not unpleasantly drunk but had been sensible enough to pass out before any violent action proved necessary. He had been deposited, not very gently, on the lawn, where it was hoped that a hyena would give him a rude awakening. For all practical purposes he could, therefore, be regarded as absent.
Arthur C. Clarke
Science is great for us. But for someone who see the human evaluation for more than one million years, science is a just a one instant and younger than a baby.
Muditha Champika
Science is great for us. But for someone who sees the human evaluation for more than one million years, science is just a one instant and younger than a baby.
Muditha Champika
Science is great for us. But for someone who sees the humans for more than one million years, science is just a one instant like a baby trying to talk.
Muditha Champika
This is only a work of fiction , The Truth as always will be far stranger
Arthur C. Clarke
…once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization…
Arthur C. Clarke
There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.
Arthur C. Clarke
Meteorites don’t fall on the Earth. They fall on the Sun and the Earth gets in the way.” - John W. Campbell
Arthur C. Clarke
It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.
Arthur C. Clarke
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke
Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.
Arthur C. Clarke
How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean.
Arthur C. Clarke
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
There were, however, a few exceptions.One was Norma Dodsworth, the poet, who had not unpleasantly drunk but had been sensible enough to pass out before any violent action proved necessary. He had been deposited, not very gently, on the lawn, where it was hoped that a hyena would give him a rude awakening. For all practical purposes he could, therefore, be regarded as absent.
Arthur C. Clarke
Tennis taught me to take chances, to take life as it comes. To hit every ball that comes to me no matter how hard it looks, to give it my best shot.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
We need no language to laugh
Janaki Sooriyarachchi
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world.
Arthur C. Clarke
The main element of true reconciliation is the public education system.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelli
Arthur C. Clarke
The Buddha, Christ and Mohammed had to rely on God and karma and human priests for judgement; we don’t. We have data. We have algorithms. We have Guidance. God is now available as an application, on your mobile phone or in the cloud, twenty four seven, three sixty five.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.
Arthur C. Clarke
The rash assertion that "God made man in His own image" is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths.
Arthur C. Clarke
One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.
Arthur C. Clarke
War crimes, you say?No matter how many policies you put on paper, in reality, there are no rights and wrongs in war. War itself is a crime. War cannot be justified. I believe, the only people, in this world, whose opinions matter, are the ones who go the extra mile to help other people expecting nothing in return. Soldiers who fight fiercely for their country, the doctors in Sri Lanka's public hospitals attending to hundreds of patients at a time for no extra pay , the nuns who voluntarily teach English and math to children of refugee camps in the north, the monks who collect food to feed entire villages during crises, they are the people worth listening to, their opinion matters. So find me one of them who will say: they wish the war didn't end in 2009, that they wish Sri Lanka was divided into two parts. Find me one of them who agrees with the international war crime allegations against Sri Lanka, and I will listen. But I will not listen to the opinions of those who are paid to find faults in a war they were never a part of, a war they never experienced themselves. I will not listen to the opinions of those who watched the war on tv or read about it on the internet or were moved by a documentary on Al Jazeera. The war is over. The damage is done. Let Sri Lanka move on. So our children will never have to see what we've seen.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
A blind lover, don't knowwhat I love till I write it out
Michael Ondaatje
Men had always been the reciters of poetry in the desert.
Michael Ondaatje
What we call life...is the combination of the Five Aggregates, a combination of physical and mental energies. These are constantly changing; they do not remain the same for two consecutive moments. Every moment they are born and they die. 'When the Aggregates arise, decay and die, O bhikkhu, every moment you are born, decay, and die.' This, even dow during this life time, every moment we are born and die, but we continue. If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or a Soul behind them after the non-functioning of the body?
Walpola Rahula
He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness.
Arthur C. Clarke
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.
Michael Ondaatje
He was with me, beside me, inside me, and I did not care that my children were asleep, alone at home, or that the neighbors might come to know. He burned the fear out of me until all was left was desire.
Ru Freeman
I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. And I thought if I was going to die I would die with you.Someone like you, young as I am, I saw so many dying near me in the last year. I didn’t feel scared. Icertainly wasn’t brave just now. I thought to myself, We have this villa this grass, we should have laindown together, you in my arms, before we died. I wanted to touch that bone at your neck, collarbone,it’s like a small hard wing under your skin. I wanted to place my fingers against it. I’ve always liked fleshthe colour of rivers and rocks or like the brown eye of a Susan, do you know what that flower is? Haveyou seen them? I am so tired, Kip, I want to sleep. I want to sleep under this tree, put my eye againstyour collarbone I just want to close my eyes without thinking of others, want to find the crook of a treeand climb into it and sleep. What a careful mind! To know which wire to cut. How did you know? Youkept saying I don’t know I don’t know, but you did. Right? Don’t shake, you have to be a still bed forme, let me curl up as if you were a good grandfather I could hug, I love the word ‘curl,’ such a slowword, you can’t rush it...
Michael Ondaatje
Humor was the enemy of desire.
Arthur C. Clarke
After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.
Arthur C. Clarke
I know money isn't everything. but it certainly is something.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
Sometimes I wish life was written pencil so we could erase it and write it all over again.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
The thing about life is, you’ve got to somehow make it through the day. Don’t wait for the beautiful evening. Go on with your life. Of course, the beautiful evening will come. In fact, she’s on her way. And she’s coming to you as fast as she can. And dude, she’s beautiful.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
If there is no any patience, forbearance and forgiveness. Then there is no peace.
Muditha Champika
Of course, being brave does not mean running towards danger.
Janaki Sooriyarachchi
Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.
Arthur C. Clarke
But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.
Arthur C. Clarke
A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
Arthur C. Clarke