Sinhalese Quotes & Sayings

If the woman has the physical fitness and the meritorious luck to bear his children, the family was a fortunate one. Villagers always looked at sterility with a squinted eye, and its fault and the misfortune lay solely on the woman's part. As such, a childless woman often became culprit for her entire life. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

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. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

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. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

According to the Buddha's doctrine that they believed in, it was not the caste that defined a person high or low. It was one's deeds that mattered. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Our innocent kids undergo much trouble. Not only do the children of high caste families look down upon our children calling them low caste brats, but even some teachers ridicule them. They beat our children for no reason. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Physical beauty or sexual attraction in a woman was not a criterion in deciding, strengthening, or the survival of such relationships of these villagers. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Carolina protected her so that Suneetha should remain a virgin until her wedding night. The worth of such purity in character was immeasurable in this society and culture. Therefore, she never even allowed Suneetha to go with other village girls when they went to the desolate cinnamon gardens to gather firewood. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan. — Kumar Sangakkara

In a front of each home garden the villagers fixed a triangular wooden lamp-house on the top of a pole planted on the ground to hold a small statue of Lord Buddha and some deities. They used to offer flowers at this small shrine and light a tiny clay oil lamp. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

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. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Generally, that humble piece of furniture placed on the front veranda of the house officially belonged to the man of the household; the women never slept on it. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Sri Lanka is an island off the coast of India. There's two ethnicities there; one the Sinhalese, which is the majority and the government, and the minority, who are the Tamils. That's where I'm from. And my lifetime sort of began there; I spent 10 years, and I was there during when the war started and fled as a refugee to England. — M.I.A.

Even in pre-independence Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was once known, school and college enrolment among Tamils exceeded that of other ethnicities in the country. Gradually, differences in educational attainment came to form the identities of the Tamil and Sinhalese communities, which grew into separate ethnic blocs, each of which considered itself wronged by the other. — Rohini Mohan

The Sinhalese people are not, in my opinion, happier or better than they were in the eighteenth century. Talk of progress, and the reality, are not the same. Civilisation is supposed to advance by the creation of new desires, to gratify which the individual must endeavour to improve his position. But in reality it is not quantity, but quality of wants that may be taken as evidence of progress in the Art of Living. No one acquainted with modern Sinhalese taste will pretend that it gives evidence of any improvement in the quality of wants. Indeed, it is sufficiently obvious that quantity, variety, and novelty are not really compatible with quality. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Even though we are supposed to be low caste and poor our vote also has the same value and validity as that of great people. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

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. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

The girls were screaming in Tamil, except for one, who was repeating the word "epa" like a loud and shrill chant. That was not how the Sinhala word was usually used, but it was an expression Mugil had ofen heard Sinhalese policeman and the army lob at civilians. Epa! when they didn't want you to sell apples by the road in Jaffna. Epa! when you tried to drive on at the checkpoint at Vavuniya. Epa! Don't! The girl's voice seemed to ring through all of Kilinochchi. — Rohini Mohan

If their horoscopes are not compatible, this marriage is out of the question. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

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

The villagers considered it lucky to make the New Year's first money transaction with her because she was a prosperous person. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

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. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Master Salamon usually set off a little later as neither he nor other male members of their community were in the habit of walking on the road alongside their wives. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

Killing life in whatever way, will drag you along the hell's way. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

It was all part of the Eastern system of control and appropriation, Frankie reflected philosophically. The old controlled the young, the educated the uneducated, and as for the rich, well the rich had no doubt at all that they actually owned the poor. — Ashok Ferrey

The conflict is mainly between the two major linguistic groups, the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The two races are locked, as it were, in a mortal combat, the Sinhalese majority fighting for perpetual domination over the Tamils with the ultimate object of an extinction of the Tamils as a distinct entity and the Tamils struggling for sheer survival.

The combat is an unequal one, for the Sinhalese with their numerical superiority are in possession of all political power and the exclusive control of Government. The Tamils have only the justice of their cause to give them the necessary strength to sustain the struggle — V. Navaratnam

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. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse