10 insights from greatest book G.K. Chesterton ever wrote (Orthodoxy | 1908)

Chesterton writes in Orthodoxy that humans have a "double spiritual need." On this Earth, they want to experience the "fascination of a strange town," while also feeling at home. They crave both surprise and safety.

Chesterton: We need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that's strange with something that's secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being comfortable

Old art v/s new art: "The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling ; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central."

Why new fiction fails: "You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world."

Healthy men have the bandwidth for superfluity: "It's the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man isn't strong enough to be idle. It's exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand...he generally sees too much cause in everything."

Old humility v/s new humility: "The old humility made a man doubtful. about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether." You can be humble in the wrong way, too...

Art requires limitations: "The essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you'll really find that youre not free to draw a giraffe."

It is impossible to critique, or to even mock, without having set standards of the ideal. Chesterton wrote: "When little boys in the street laugh at the fatness of some distinguished journalist, they are unconsciously assuming a standard of Greek sculpture."

Why its anti-democratic to ignore tradition: "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."

Chesterton on the atheist's worldview: He has "nothing to show us except more and more infinite corridors of space lit by ghastly suns and empty of all that is divine." We need more than that to live...

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