I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute; From the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.

-Cowper,William
  Poems,'Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk, During His Solitary Abode in the Island of  Juan Fernandez'.

His lazy, long, lascivious reign.

-Defoe, Daniel
  Of Charles II. The True-Born Englishman, pt.1, l.236.

From his childhood onward this boy will be surrounded by sycophants and flatterers by the score, and will be taught to believe himself as of a superior creation. A line will be drawn between him and the people whom he is to be called upon some day to reign over. In due course, following the precedent which has already been set, he will be sent on a tour round the world, and probably rumours of a morganatic alliancewill follow, and the end of it all will bethattheCountry will be calledupontopay the bill.

-Hardie, (James) Keir
  Speech in the House of Commons, 28  Jun, opposing an Address of Congratulation to the Queen being passed in the House of Commons, on the birth of a son (the future Edward VIII) to the Duke and Duchess ofYork.

If the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,öif you did not come inonthewife'sside,öif youdid not sneak intothehouse in her train, but were an old friend in first habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on,ölook about you† Every long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world.

-Lamb, Charles
  Essays of Elia,'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'.

Nature that heard such sound Beneath the hollow round Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region thrilling, Now was almost won To think her part was done, And that her reign had here its last fulfilling; She knew such harmonyalone Could hold all heaven and earth in happier unio'  n.

-Milton,John
  'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity','The Hymn', stanza10.

A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.542^3.

Toadminister istogovern; togovernistoreign.That isthe problem.

-Mirabeau, Honore¤   Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de
  Memorandum, 3  Jul.

To be Omnipotent but friendless is to reign.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  Prometheus Unbound, act 2, sc.4, l.47^8.

   A dead reign†a strange epoch of folly and shame.

-Zola, EŁ  mile
On the France of the Second Empire. Quoted inJoanna Richardson LaVie Parisienne (1971), p.276.