The Ten Most Important Things Ever Said

Book excerpt: Everyone loves a great quote. We marvel at those rare souls who can clearly convey an idea and elicit an emotional response from a reader or an audience in a mere sentence or two. The economy of their words provides us a nicely packaged expression that is convenient, versatile and easily stored, perhaps on a slip of paper or perhaps merely tucked away in our memory banks. Because ideas are not expressed in a vacuum, learning something about the person to whom a quote is attributed is essential if we are to fully appreciate its intended meaning. In "The Ten Most Important Things Ever Said", Dan D. Schinzel brings together quotes from a wide variety of sources that span different cultures and times. Each of the ten expressions is followed by a fictional scene and conversation created to elaborate on the intentions of the author. Each quote is also accompanied by two or three relevant stories from the past: some familiar, others obscure. The end product is a book that is intended to be a starting point for a conversation about how the words of the past can serve as beacons for our future. For while the ten different sayings cover an assortment of subjects and are attributed to a variety of sources, they all share one common trait: the words and their meaning are timeless.