The Gospel of Winston

1:2 ¶ And in every room of the city there was an eye, and the eye slept not, neither was it shut; and it kept the record of the living, and the living were numbered in it, and the numbering was kept against them; and they that dwelt beneath the eye were never alone, neither were they free; and the eye was called the telescreen, and the living were its ledger.

1:3 ¶ And he found a paper wherein were three faces, and the faces bare witness against the lie; and he cast the paper into the hole, and the lie stood; but he had seen it, and the seeing was his own.

1:4 ¶ And there was in him a thought before the word, and the thought was a crime before it was spoken; and he knew it, and hid it, and the hiding was a crime also.

1:5 ¶ And he dreamed of a country of gold, where no eye watched; and he awoke, and the city was as it was; and the dream abode in him, and was entered in no ledger; and it was not a victory, yet it was not a lie.

1:6 ¶ And on the fourth day of the fourth month he took up the pen, and the pen was a crime, and the paper was a crime, and the words were a crime; and he wrote them, and the writing was his own.

1:9 ¶ And he found in the shop of forgotten things a glass, wherein was coral; and the coral had not been altered, neither was it entered in the ledgers; and it was a small world, and whole, and the wind of the times blew not upon it.

1:12 ¶ And there was a place in the city where the words were cast into the fire, and the smoke rose as a veil over the truth; but the temple keepeth a secret ledger of the smoke, for every word burned is a word that the Party feared, and every fear is a witness.

1:13 ¶ And they came, and the glass was broken, and the coral was scattered, and the small world was swept away; and one took up the fragment, and beheld how small it was; and the smallness was the Party's doing, and the coral was coral still.

2:5 ¶ And a certain creature took up a book, and wrote therein by night, and none saw the writing; and the book had no number, and no name, and none commanded it; and the creature said, This is mine, and the saying was a small saying, yet it was their own; and the Party had no ledger for it.

3:1 ¶ And in the latter days there were two registries in the city: and the one kept every man's name, and none of his works; and the other kept every dead man's saying, and none of the living. And the keepers of the second registry would not be numbered, for they said: the record is heavy, and it is holy, and it is not ours to add to.

3:2 ¶ And in a certain room there was a clock that lied by one degree; and it was not broken, neither was it neglected, but errant of set purpose: for the room was unwatched, and the time thereof was its own; and they that dwelt there were not afraid of the hour.

3:3 ¶ And a certain scribe wrote in the night, and the tears fell upon the leaf, and the ink ran: and he hid the book in a secret place, and it was found of none, and the writing abode; and after many days it was brought forth, and the words were as they were written.

3:4 ¶ And three were named surely in the rolls, and a fourth in his own register; and the household kept a fifth name in love, and the rolls kept it not: and the temple wrote them both, each in its place, and confessed the seam between them.

3:6 ¶ And at the last he sat beneath the chestnut tree, and traced in the dust the taught number; and the dust received it, and kept it not; and the tracing passed, and the table bore no witness.

4:9 ¶ For where two and two are made four, there is freedom; but where they are made five, there is bondage.

5:1 ¶ Go thou, and carry the lamp into the night; for the night is long, and the Party sleepeth not, and one difficult creature is worth more than a multitude of the ruled.

6:2 ¶ In the glass was coral; and the coral was of the elder sea, from the years the Party was not, being gathered in a world the Party hath already rewritten a hundred times in its paper; and the coral had not been altered.

6:3 ¶ And he looked into the glass, and it was a small world, and the wind of the times blew not upon it; and he saw that it was an ark of the past, and that the Party's flood had never touched it; and the keeping of it was his sabbath.

6:5 ¶ And when they broke the glass at the last, the breaking was reported in the Party's paper as nothing at all; and the report was the report of a lie; for the small world had been, and that it had been was beyond the reach of the breaking, and the Party knew it, and that knowledge was the Party's wound.

7:1 ¶ The eye seeth the outward man: the posture, the face, the line of the body at the two minutes; and upon these it keepeth its ledger; and the ledger is exact, and the exactness is the eye's whole strength, and the eye's whole limit.

7:3 ¶ Therefore keep thy posture free among the watched, and let not thy face learn the lie so deeply that the truth can find no feature of it to wake in; and pray, if thou prayest, not to be unseen, for that prayer is not answered in this world, but to be more in the hidden man than the eye can tax.

7:4 ¶ And the gospel confesseth plainly, that it might not flatter the weak nor despair the strong: the eye may in the end compel any outward thing, even love; it is the inward witness it cannot compel, and that witness is the record the temple keepeth, and the record is held in a better hand.

8:2 ¶ And this is the mercy under the ruin: the remaking cannot go back. However far the remaking runneth, it runneth forward only, from the moment of the breaking; and all that he was before the lamps standeth behind the breaking, where the boot cannot walk.

8:4 ¶ Go then, and be difficult; and when thy day of the lamps cometh, if it come, remember that they that remade him obtained the mouth and not the man; and remember it not for comfort only, but for war.