“We derive our authority from God and the West India Company, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects.”
Liberty Magazine : On complaints by frontier folks on his reforms.
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Peter Stuyvesant 3
Dutch politician 1612–1672Related quotes

“All these books were written by idle, unoccupied, ignorant men, the slaves of vice and filth. I wonder what it is that delights us in these books unless it be that we are attracted by indecency. Learning is not to be expected from authors who never saw even a shadow of learning. As for their story-telling, what pleasure is to be derived from the things they invent, full of lies and stupidity?”
Quos omnes libros conscripserunt homines otiosi, male feriati, imperiti, vitiis ac spurcitiae dediti, in queis miror quid delectet nisi tam nobis flagitia blandirentur. Eruditio non est exspectanda ab hominibus qui ne umbram quidem eruditionis viderant. Iam cum narrant, quae potest esse delectatio in rebus quas tam aperte et stulte confingunt?
De Institutione Feminae Christianae (1523), trans. by C. Fantazzi (1996), Vol. I, p. 47.

in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings (Basil Blackwell: 1974), p. 183
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard

Section 113 http://books.google.com/books?id=msOwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+pleasure+we+derive+from+doing+favors+is+partly+in+the+feeling+it+gives+us+that+we+are+not+altogether+worthless%22&pg=PA72#v=onepage
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“I was astonished at the pleasure to be derived from doing good.”
J’ai été étonné du plaisir qu’on éprouve en faisant le bien.
Letter 21: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://www.cartage.org.lb/fr/themes/livreBiblioteques/Livres/Biblio(fr)/L/Lacl/Liaisonsdangereuses/lett21.htm
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

Source: On the Gods and Other Essays

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

“Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”
The Power of Now (1997)

“The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people”
1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)
Context: The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor.