STORY: The Grand Total Of It All by Willi Hoffsuemmer

Story title: The Grand Total Of It All 
By: Willi Hoffsuemmer

    They tell the story of an intelligent young king who ordered all the learned professor of his kingdom to gather and write down all the wisdom of the world. They got right down to work and forty years later, they had a thousand books packed with wisdom. The king, who had meantime reached sixty years of age, told them, "I cannot possibly read a thousand books. Reduce all that wisdom to basics."
    After ten more years the professors reduced the world's wisdom to a hundred volumes. "That's still
too much," said the king." I'm already seventy years old. Condense all that wisdom into absolute essentials."
    So the wise men tried again and squeezed all the wisdom of the world into just one book. But by that time the king was lying on his deathbed. so volumes of wisdom down to just one sentence."People live, they suffer, the die. The only thing that outlives them is love."