“Few men desire freedom, the greater part desire just masters.”

La reconnaissance de la plupart des hommes n'est qu'une secrète envie de recevoir de plus grands bienfaits.
Variant translation: Gratitude is the lively expectation of favours yet to come.
Maxim 298. Compare: "The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favours", attributed to Sir Robert Walpole.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

1920s, Marriage and Morals (1929)

Source: The Da Vinci Code

Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), p. 78

Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung (2005).

A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: Master, Master Poet,
Master of our silent desires,
The heart of the world quivers with the throbbing of your heart,
But it burns not with your song.
The world sits listening to your voice in tranquil delight,
But it rises not from its seat
To scale the ridges of your hills.
Man would dream your dream but he would not wake to your dawn
Which is his greater dream.
He would see with your vision,
But he would not drag his heavy feet to your throne.
Yet many have been enthroned in your name
And mitred with your power,
And have turned your golden visit
Into crowns for their head and sceptres for their hand.

Source: The Way of Kings

Source: The Black Room (1975), p. 108

Diary entry, (17 March 1981), translated from the original Irish, in Skylark Sing your Lonely Song : An Anthology of the Writings of Bobby Sands (1991)
Other writings