John Evelyn Quotes

Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.

… test everything, and retain whatever is good.

The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you've found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.

It's important for the explorer to be willing to be led astray.

If I have several bad guys and I only want to end up with one of them, then I have to decide which one I want in the end. And normally it's the one who is the most interesting talker.

For the critic, the word 'best' is like a grenade without a pin: Toss it around too freely, and you're likely to get your hand blown off.

I don't control the movies that are offered to me, but I make choices based on certain parameters.

I'm still learning every night, with every opportunity to write something, to sing something, to perform any work. Every opportunity to do these things brings me further along the journey, and the best part is, no matter how far along I go, I have so much more to learn.

Excellence - Take what you have and do the BEST with it.

Doors lead to things and I've never met one I haven't wanted to open.

I suppose the one quality in an astronaut more powerful than any other is curiosity. They have to get some place nobody's ever been.

The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace.

The good is the enemy of the best.

Everyone picks the best one when given a choice.

There is a better way to do it - Find it!

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

I came into this life, looked all around. I saw just what I liked and took what I found.

I'm simply following the journey.

We don't take a trip. A trip takes us.

I am going to that country which I have all my life wished to see.

For sure, you have to be lost to find a place that can’t be found.

Here the people could stand it no longer and complained of the long voyage; but the Admiral cheered them as best he could, holding out good hope of the advantages they would have. He added that it was useless to complain, he had come [to go] to the Indies, and so had to continue it until he found them, with the help of Our Lord.

Leave no path untaken.

What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in every thing, and who, having eyes to see, what time and chance are perpetually holding out to him as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his hands on.

When I'm in my neighborhood, I don't see anything anymore, because I'm so used to it. When I go somewhere else, suddenly, I'm alive. I'm on alert, and I can be fresh.