August 8, 2016. Sun Yang says he is 'king' of 1500m at Rio Olympics, and no friend of Mack Horton https://www.smh.com.au/sport/sun-yang-says-he-is-king-of-1500m-at-rio-olympics-and-no-friend-of-mack-horton-20160808-gqn8ob.html
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Ah, but which king? The monarch who had stood on these granite flagstones — scarcely worn then, eighteen hundred years ago — was probably an able and intelligent man; but he failed to conceive that the time could ever come when he would fade into an anonymity as deep as that of his humblest subjects.
Source: 1970s, The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Ch. 11 “The Silent Princess”, p. 65
“I am the black crow king,
Keeper of the forgotten corn,
The King!”
Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Black Crow King
“I am king of the Romans and above grammar.”
Original Latin: Ego sum rex Romanus et super grammaticam Carlyle, Thomas (1858). History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great (Volume II) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/02frd10.txt. Gutenberg.org.
“On the laugh of a child I am borne to the joy of the King.”
The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)
“Like Enki, king of the abzu, I am successful in finding solutions, and am wise in words.”
In Debate between Bird and Fish, early 2nd millennium BCE. Text online http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr535.htm at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.
Babak Khorramdin's letter to his son, rejecting the caliph’s amnesty message, quoted by Al-Tabari, cited in "BĀBAK ḴORRAMI" at Encyclopaedia Iranica http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/babak-korrami
“I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.”
[Claudi Arizzi, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/royal-watchers-ponder-whats-deal, Royal watchers ponder 'what's the deal?', 21 November 1997, 20 September 2015, Phnom Penh Post]
