“It was quiet in the room. Only the clock ticked on in the remorseless, mechanical minutes that men have made for themselves to measure away the joy and sadness of their earthly lives.”

“Because, as I have told you so many times, I have no words to make you understand," said the captain. It' s all the beauty and serenity and nobility you have ever experienced on earth. It's all your grandest and most generous feelings, and the finest sunsets and greatest music- and then you' re only on the fringe of understanding.”

“Knowledge and book learning are not wisdom," said the captain."Is this book wisdom?" asked Lucy, putting the manuscript back on the table."It has some elements of wisdom in it, me dear," replied the captain. "I did not lead a very wise life myself but it was a full one and a grown-up one. You come to age very often through shipwreck and disaster, and at the heart of the whirlpool some men find God.”

“Oh, Lucia the captain said softly, you are so little and so lovely. how I would have liked to have taken you to Norway and shown you the fiords in the midnight sun, and to China- what you've missed, Lucia, by being born too late to travel the Seven Seas with me! And what I've missed, too.”

“I must be very selfish, she thought, for I want to set nothing and no one right; all I want is to be left in peace to make what I can of this problem called life for myself and my children.”

“But love, honest love, requires empathy. It is a sharing—of joy, of pain, of laughter, and of tears. Honest love makes one’s soul a reflection of the partner’s moods. And as a room seems larger when it is lined with mirrors, so do the joys become amplified. And as the individual items within the mirrored room seem less acute, so does pain diminish and fade, stretched thin by the sharing. That is the beauty of love, whether in passion or friendship. A sharing that multiplies the joys and thins the pains.”

“Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength. Stealing our will, for what are we without empathy? What manner of joy might we find in our live if we cannot understand the joys and pains of those around us, if we cannot share in a greater community.”