Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

“I don't want more sense!" I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. "Not if sense means I'll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that's worth holding on to?”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“You’ve been inexpressibly lucky,â€� he said finally. “And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Thinking is a kind of wandering. Reasoning becomes useful only to let the mind wander in the directions you want it to.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, කලà·ÂÕ¶ºà·¶Ï¶œà¶�

“I knew myself for the first time in a week, standing on earth instead of polished marble.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“The two qualities essential to a good man were honesty and compassion, Malin felt. His father lived his life as if he had rejected these qualities. Saviman Kabalana reasoned that loving kindness and compassion were weaknesses. Therefore he hid behind a mask that concealed his innate human qualities of love and kindness, both in his office and at home.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“I wanted to scream, to weep. I wanted to drag my hand across the world and wipe it.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Qui est déraciné déracine. Qui est enraciné ne déracine pas.
(Whoever is uprooted uproots. Who is rooted does not uproot.)”
― Simone Weil

“Unless you learn to control the love you have for your children intelligently, it can become a selfish emotion.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, කලà·ÂÕ¶ºà·¶Ï¶œà¶�

“Family pride was a mask that had covered her egoism.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, කලà·ÂÕ¶ºà·¶Ï¶œà¶�

“A woman anticipates danger by instinct, rather than inductive reasoning. Due to this, when faced with danger due to passionate feelings related to their basic needs, women are impelled by reasoning, conditioned by instincts acquired from family traditions and the conventions of her social stratum, much more than men are.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Gamperaliya

“A village woman from a poor family may violate the code of propriety, not because of poverty, but because she has been the victim of the menace of male predators. A woman from a family of the gentry, would never be the victim of such intimidation. Moreover the women of the gentry were bonded to follow their code of conduct and not to transgress, by generations of breeding.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Gamperaliya

“Idiocy is neither right nor wrong. A good man behaves foolishly by choice, at least once in a while.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, කලà·ÂÕ¶ºà·¶Ï¶œà¶�

“Even when a child spots any inadequacies, acknowledgement will only encourage disobedience and disregard of his parents' advice.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, කලà·ÂÕ¶ºà·¶Ï¶œà¶�

“Tissa saw in life a complex self-preserving system that automatically repairs the inevitable instances of breakdown of both body and mind. The body form that has ceased to be adaptive to the physical world disintegrates, as does the mind that is not adaptive to the subjective world.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, කලà·ÂÕ¶ºà·¶Ï¶œà¶�

“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.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“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.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“Why was Malin deliberately trying to hurt the feelings of his parents? Aravinda could not find an answer. Hurting his own parents' feelings was something alien to Aravinda. He lived among rural folk who encouraged children not to flout the wishes of parents and elders.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“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.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“Virtue and Vice are both realities. Virtue cannot exist without Vice. Although 'virtue' and 'vice' are two words, the word 'vice' becomes meaningful only against the word 'virtue' and vice versa. They co-exist, moulded by the existing economic and social order. Without the word 'vice' the word virtue becomes an empty sound like a dog's bark. It's only in Brahma's domain that light exists without darkness.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“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.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“Malin had been born and bred in an upper-class family. Was that the cause of his dissillusionment and bitterness with that way of life? The way he could have peace of mind therefore, was by detaching himself from that way of life and battling against it. Would Prince Siddharta have renounced the world if he had been born into poverty?”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“Can society be blamed for thinking that one who did not share another's sorrows, was not stirred by injustice, did not shed a tear for the dead, was not provoked by taunts and insults, is a barren, anti-social human being?”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“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.”
― Martin Wickramasinghe, Yuganthaya

“The jurors appear vaguely stranded and at loose ends, uprooted from their routines and livelihoods.”
― Walter Kirn, Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade

“The latent conflict between the intellectual and the economic upper class is nowhere openly engaged as yet, least of all by the artists, who, with their less developed social consciousness, react more slowly than their humanistic masters. But the problem, even if it is un-admitted and unexpressed is present all the time and in all places, and the whole intelligenstsia, both literary and artistic, is threatened by the danger of developing either into an uprooted, "unbourgeois", and envious class of bohemians or into a conservative, passive cringing class of academics. The humanists escape from from this alternative into their ivory tower, and finally succumb to both the dangers which they had intended to avoid.”
― Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art: Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque

“At times we may feel that the tree is certain to topple, but I can rest assured that the roots of my belief will never be ripped out by the winds of desperation.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough