An inherited property is very easily overwritten by any rule, which has a value for that same property. So, inherited properties are the ones who have the lowest priority.
This is really elements inheriting values from one another and is mostly related to text: like color, font-size, font-family, font-style, font-weight, line-height, letter-spacing, text-align, text-transform, text-shadow, list-style, etc. An element, like border does not get inherited, by each heading, paragraph, image, etc.
The universal selector simply selects every single element on the page. It is useful if we want a certain property applied to all units, but which does not get inherited. It has the lowest level to be selected.
Like so:
* {
border-top: 10px solid #1098ad;
}
(That will put a border on top of every single paragraph, header, body, list, footer, header, image, strong, italic, etc.)