Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
Pierre TrudeauRead
Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being close to someone significant can have a profound impact on your life, irrespective of how good the relationship may be.
This quote by Pierre Trudeau suggests that proximity to a powerful and significant presence can influence one's life deeply. By drawing an analogy to living next to an elephant, Trudeau implies that even if the entity is calm and friendly, it can still exert considerable influence over you, affecting your daily existence and emotions. This speaks to the complexities of living in close quarters with someone who holds power or importance, reflecting how interpersonal relationships, even when seemingly peaceful, can have underlying tensions and dynamics.
Themes
ProximityInfluenceRelationshipsTensionInterpersonal
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about neighborly relations, this quote can illustrate the complexities of close living quarters.
More from Pierre Trudeau
All quotes →We wish nothing more, but we will accept nothing less. Masters in our own house we must be, but our house is the whole of Canada.
Pierre TrudeauRead
I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.
Pierre TrudeauRead
The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
Pierre TrudeauRead
Canada will be a strong country when Canadians of all provinces feel at home in all parts of the country, and when they feel that all Canada belongs to them.
Pierre TrudeauRead
My life is one long curve, full of turning points.
Pierre TrudeauRead
Similar quotes
Although many, we might even say most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings.
Henri NouwenRead
Before I discovered the concept of the 5 love languages, a bit of advice I was given was to become a student of my wife and to take time to learn what makes her feel loved. I soon learned that what makes her feel loved may not always be the thing I want to do because it may not come natural to me. But learning to love her in the way that makes her feel loved is a greater demonstration of my love for her, because I've chosen to do it with a goal of pleasing her.
Gary ChapmanRead
There were a lot of things I loved about working in a library, but mostly I miss the library patrons. I love books, but books are everywhere. Library patrons are as various and oddball and democratic as library books.
Elizabeth MccrackenRead
I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends.
Ernest HemingwayRead
Compassion is the ability to understand how difficult it is for people to be the best of what they want to be at all times.
Joan D. ChittisterRead
Compassion is the basis of all truthful relationship: it means being present with love-for ourselves and for all life, including animals, fish, birds, and trees. Compassion is bringing our deepest truth into our actions, no matter how much the world seems to resist, because that is ultimately what we have to give this world and one another.
Ram DassRead