Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [135]

Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 135

Note

‘It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage’ — a precise, counterintuitive reformulation of what the diary is for. The word ‘ghost’ picks up ‘vapour’ from the prior paragraph; the act of writing is re-valued from communication to self-preservation.