Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.
Meaning of the quote
This quote is comparing love to the measles, a common childhood illness. The main idea is that love, like the measles, tends to be more intense and difficult to deal with the older you get. Just as the measles can be more severe in adults, the quote suggests that the experience of love becomes more intense and challenging as you get older. The comparison helps explain how love can feel overwhelming and difficult to manage, especially for those who are not used to such intense emotions.
About Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke was an acclaimed Austrian poet and novelist known for his expressive and mystical writings in German. He traveled extensively throughout Europe and is best known for his poetry collections Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, as well as his semi-autobiographical novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.
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More quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke
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All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.
Austrian poet and writer (1875-1926)
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.
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Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.
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The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.
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Austrian poet and writer (1875-1926)
There may be good, but there are no pleasant marriages.
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Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.
Austrian poet and writer (1875-1926)
All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.
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The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
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Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
Austrian poet and writer (1875-1926)
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
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The only journey is the one within.
Austrian poet and writer (1875-1926)
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
Austrian poet and writer (1875-1926)
This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.
Austrian poet and writer (1875-1926)