Beau Taplin

However deep or true your affections, there is no sense in devoting your love to someone who is simply unready or unwilling to receive it. Direct your energies where they’re welcome.

Goodbyes take a great deal of courage, but what takes even more is the Hello that comes next, to cast your aversions aside despite all you’ve suffered and take a chance on somebody new, to risk it all again because you know human connection is precious and rare, and always worth the risk.

New Years Eve. The evening of little miracles.  Take away the exploding fireworks, celebrations, roaring countdowns and resolutions and what you are left with is hope. Small human hope. The hope of better days, of new beginnings, and perhaps, if you are especially lucky, a kiss.

There’s no therapy or medicine like sharing meaningful time with those you feel at peace and comfortable with. A little music for atmosphere and some quality conversation, and all of your wounds and sorrows heal themselves.

You remind me so much of life’s simple pleasures and everything effortless and sweet in the world. A good read. Fresh, clean sheets. A quick dip in the sea. A cozy, rainy Sunday morning with a hot cup of coffee and no place to be.

Fight hard and fiercely for the person you love, but after a point, for the good and peace of your own heart, you must learn to concede defeat and withdraw, to recognise clearly when the war you are bleeding for has already been fought and lost.

If it hurts more than it makes you happy then take the lesson and leave. Listen, it’ll be okay - some people are only rehearsals for the real thing.

The difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary life is only a matter of perspective. Pull the blinds. Look around you. It is a weird, wonderful world and you do not require a ten digit savings account to immerse yourself in it. Travel down long winding roads without a destination in mind, climb the nearest mountain and scream your heart out into the void, kiss strangers, make love, skinny dip in a lake, get lost and lose yourself (these are two separate things), explore the wilderness (particularly the one within), think less of destiny and more of the moment right here. Because in the end, as you reflect back on your life in that hospital bed, fame won’t matter, nor will the extent of your wealth. You are only the sum of the stories you can tell.

In this life a steady love and a place to call home are more precious than all the earthly possessions and wealth in the world.

When you find yourself weighing the pros and cons of a relationship, it is time to say goodbye and move on, because when you are truly in love, you find that the faults, the flaws, all those little quirks that make your skin crawl, are the very same things you cannot imagine a life without.

Beautiful. Crushingly so. You look like the rest of my life.

There is a corner of my heart that is yours. And I don’t mean for now or until I’ve found somebody else. I mean to say that whether I fall in love a thousand times over or never again, there will always be a small quiet place in my heart that belongs only to you.

The solution to many of life's deepest troubles begins with simple human courage. The courage to search inward. The courage to take those first bold steps. The courage to find the thing you fear most and charge valiantly toward it.