Banquet Quotes & Sayings

They were seated at the banquet side by side, immediately good friends, their great attraction being that each of them knew there was nothing to fear from the other. — Jean Plaidy

The walls were draped with banners covered with cabalistic signs, an abundance of owls of all kinds, scarabs and ibises, and Oriental divinities of uncertain origin. Near the rear wall was a dais, a proscenium of burning torches held up by rough logs, and in the background an altar with a triangular altarpiece and statuettes of Isis and Osiris. The room was ringed by an amphitheater of figures of Anubis, and there was a portrait of Cagliostro (it could hardly have been of anyone else, could it?), a gilded mummy in Cheops format, two five-armed candelabra, a gong suspended from two rampant snakes, on a podium a lectern covered by calico printed with hieroglyphics, and two crowns, two tripods, a little portable sarcophagus, a throne, a fake seventeenth-century fauteuil, four unmatched chairs suitable for a banquet with the sheriff of Nottingham, and candles, tapers, votive lights, all flickering very spiritually. — Umberto Eco

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken. — Aristotle.

The abundant life is a spiritual life. Too many sit at the banquet table of the gospel of Jesus Christ and merely nibble at the feast placed before them. They go through the motions - attending their meetings perhaps, glancing at scriptures, repeating familiar prayers - but their hearts are far away. If they are honest, they would admit to being more interested in the latest neighborhood rumors, stock market trends, and their favorite TV show than they are in the supernal wonders and sweet ministerings of the Holy Spirit. Do you wish to partake of this living water and experience that divine well springing up within you to everlasting life? Then be not afraid. Believe with all your hearts. Develop an unshakable faith in the Son of God. Let your hearts reach out in earnest prayer. Fill your minds with knowledge of Him. Forsake your weaknesses. Walk in holiness and harmony with the commandments. Drink deeply of the living waters of the gospel of Jesus Christ. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedom
which is bordered on all sides by isolation
is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet. — Saul Bellow

Banquet: a plate of cold, hairy chicken and artificially coloured green peas completely surrounded by dreary speeches and appeals for donations. — Bennett Cerf

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet. — Mark Twain

They lurk in the cold and dark.Hungry and,wicked,they wait for their one chance to devour the weak on Sorry Night.Then the vours feast on a banquet of fear.Your fear.They steal your soul but your body remains.No one knows the difference. — Simon Holt

The room was not impressively large, even by Manhattan apartment-house standards, but its accumulated furnishings might have lent a snug appearance to a banquet hall in Valhalla. — J.D. Salinger

At a banquet given in his honour Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock once modestly attributed his success in life to the habit of "getting up earlier than the other fellow." But this was partly metaphorical, partly false and in case wholly relative for journalists are as a rule late risers. — Evelyn Waugh

Maddox had been kissed there before. Polite little explorations, tentative tongue flicks, quick forays before the main event. But Ben made a meal out of his ass - a seven-course banquet of sensation and tongue fucking. Like literally, fucking, tongue delving deep. That was new, deliciously so. "God. — Annabeth Albert

When you're a failure in Hollywood, that's like starving to death outside a banquet hall, with smells of filet mignon driving you crazy. — Marilyn Monroe

Why must a man be always taking on Things not his own, as if he were a servant whose marketing-bag grows heavier and heavier from stall to stall and, loaded down, he follows and doesn't dare ask: Master, why this banquet? — Rainer Maria Rilke

You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen. — William Stafford

The more passive one's life in the field, the greater the need to reverse the situation when one returns home, which is why the arcane and authoratative character of academic writing may be seen, to some extent, as a vengeful reaction to the inertia, uneventfulness, and waiting one had to endure as a guest at someone else's banquet. A way of redressing an existental imbalance, as it were reclaiming authorial will by superimposing one's own meaning on theirs ... — Michael Jackson

In part of Lord Kames' Elements of Criticism, he says that "music improves the relish of a banquet." That I deny,
any more than painting might do. They may both be additional pleasures, as well as conversation is, but are perfectly distinct notices; and cannot, with the least propriety, be said to mix or blend with the repast, as none of them serve to raise the flavor of the wine, the sauce, the meat, or help to quicken appetite. But music and painting both add a spirit to devotion, and elevate the ardor. — Laurence Sterne

The music, and the banquet, and the wine
The garlands, the rose odors, and the flowers, The sparkling eyes, and flashing ornaments
The white arms and the raven hair
the braids, And bracelets; swan-like bosoms, and the necklace, An India in itself, yet dazzling not. — Lord Byron

No more kissing beneath bridges?"
Her face heated. She turned to go only to have him catch her sleeve. It was a risk, having such long sleeves.
"Why don't we both stay back here? No one will miss us and you're the most interesting part of the banquet anyway."
"Shameless," she scolded. — Jeannie Lin

You would not serve junk food at a banquet, and your book must be a banquet. Get your language from Swift , not from Shopsy's. — Robertson Davies

Damen watched as alone, unattended, Laurent had left his own banquet to find him, to follow him here, up the worn steps out onto the battlements. Laurent fitted himself next to him, a comfortable, unobtrusive presence that took up room in Damen's chest. They stood on the edge of the fort they had won together. — C.S. Pacat

At the time of Holy Communion I sometimes picture my soul under the figure of a little child of three or four years, who at play has got its hair tossed and its clothes soiled. These misfortunes have befallen me in battling with souls. But very soon the Blessed Virgin hastens to my aid: quickly, she takes off my dirty little pinafore, smoothes my hair and adorns it with a pretty ribbon or simply with a little flower ... and this suffices to render me pleasing and enables me to sit at the Banquet of Angels without blushing. — Therese Of Lisieux

The banquet proceeded. The first course, a mince of olives, shrimp and onions baked in oyster shells with cheese and parsley was followed by a soup of tunny, cockles and winkles simmered in white wine with leeks and dill. Then, in order, came a service of broiled quail stuffed with morels, served on slices of good white bread, with side dishes of green peas; artichokes cooked in wine and butter, with a salad of garden greens; then tripes and sausages with pickled cabbage; then a noble saddle of venison glazed with cherry sauce and served with barley first simmered in broth, then fried with garlic and sage; then honey-cakes, nuts and oranges; and all the while the goblets flowed full with noble Voluspa and San Sue from Watershade, along with the tart green muscat wine of Dascinet. — Jack Vance

Potato salad in the South is nothing less than the principal smuggler of cholesterol into the festive, careless heart. It is pure poison beneath the facade of bland puritan propriety. It is the food of choice at any food banquet of smiling relatives who celebrate tacitly among themselves the dark twining of two of their promising youth. — Padgett Powell

Walks the Fire is a good woman. She is white,but she has been among you for many years now.She was a good wife to Rides the Wind.She is a good mother to me.I remember your tales of how he hunted after she walked the fire to save Hears Not.When she was well, he held a banquet in her honor.You were all there to share his joy. — Stephanie Grace Whitson

The banquet of eternal glory is made out of the ingredients of time. — Arnold Albert Van Ruler

Ever cater a banquet for royalty? . . . Well, don't. It's awful. Just awful. -- Madden — Seanan McGuire

The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep. — James Thurber

The church is God saying: 'I'm throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine. — Rachel Held Evans

Ther's no great banquet but some fares ill. — George Herbert

We must admit that the divine banquet of the brain was, and still is, a feast with dishes that remain elusive in the blending, and with sauces whose ingredients are even now a secret. — Macdonald Critchley

The neo-conservatives, who are closely linked to the neo-corporatists, are rather different. They claim to be conservatives, when everything they stand for is a rejection of conservatism. They claim to present an alternate social model, when they are little more than the courtiers of the corporatist movement. Their agitation is filled with the bitterness and cynicism typical of courtiers who scramble for crumbs at the banquet tables of real power, but are always denied a proper chair. — John Ralston Saul

Naturally, etiquette books order handwashing before as well as after meals, but the practice also appears, with a frequency that borders on obsession, in poetry. Poets found it hard to describe a banquet or even a meal without affirming that everyone washed their hands. — Katherine Ashenburg

Perhaps the whole world is actually a banquet, to which every living thing is invited. First you come as guests: then eventually you're on the menu. — David Suzuki

Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it — Washington Irving

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth. — Epictetus

My soul has tasted of the grapes, And now it longs to go Where my dear Lord His vineyard keeps And all the clusters grow. Upon the true and living vine, My famish'd soul would feast, And banquet on the fruit divine, An everlasting guest. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Protestant Christianity, whether in its liberal or conservative garb, finds itself waking up each morning in bed with a deteriorating modern culture, between sheets with a raunchy sexual reductionism, despairing scientism, morally normless cultural relativism, and self-assertive individualism. We remain resident aliens, OF the world but not profoundly in it, dining at the banquet table of waning modernity without a whisper of table grace. We all wear biblical name tags (Joseph, David, and Sarah), but have forgotten what our Christian names mean. — Thomas C. Oden

You are blessed! God's desire is for you. And Jesus is the incarnation of God's furious longing. He is your supreme Lover. It's true. You are blessed. Your soul's winter is over. The snows are over and gone. Flowers are blooming inside of you. The season of joyful songs has come. To you. You are blessed! The love of God is folly. No one is excluded. All (really!) are called to the banquet table. Come, and be filled. You are blessed! Be-YOU-ti-full. Be you. Just be. Love supports you. You are blessed! You have learned the purpose of life: LOVE. You are blessed! You can pray like a child, and enjoy God. You are blessed! Heal, and be healed. Reclaim affirmations for the kingdom of God. Amen. Amen. Amen. — Brennan Manning

Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind. — Homer

I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life
a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it
filled me with a greater terror than the concept of extinction ... — Louis Auchincloss

On a volunteer's shoulders to see Donald break the English muffin. I understood why Christians imagined the kingdom of heaven as a feast: a banquet where nobody was excluded, where the weakest and most broken, the worst sinners and outcasts, were honored guests who welcomed one another in peace and shared their food. "Let this broken bread and shared wine be a foretaste of your kingdom," we sang, "and bring us finally to your heavenly Table, where no one is left behind, and we will join with saints and angels at the feast you have prepared from the beginning. — Sara Miles

He took me down and out into the afterlife of the brightly lit streets, a haze of rain around each streetlight like a galaxy, the whole street a universe spread out like a banquet. — Michael Montoure

One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton - a pound and a half of the worst end of the neck - when Charlotte being called out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist. Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the table-cloth; and pulled Oliver's hair; and twitched his ears; and expressed his opinion that he was a 'sneak'; and furthermore announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable event should take place; and entered upon various topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was. But, — Charles Dickens

Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another's woe. — Petrarch

To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need forever is taste. — Robert Farrar Capon

Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses ... The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread. — John Burroughs

Some June, for instance, when the rigors of the academic year are over, I would like to invite the women's studies scholars I know to a banquet where we would cook and serve things like Emily Dickinson's bread and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's pudding (the kind she was always asking Susan B. Anthony to cook for her so that she had time to write a speech). — Barbara Haber

She was halfway through the revolving door when the thought hit her; she was the one who had seen Junior and Luther fighting before the banquet. She was the one had told Detective Sullivan. Overcome with guilt, she grabbed Ted's arm and faced him.
"It's because of me," she said. "Junior was arrested because of me! — Leslie Meier

Life is like an 6-slice apple pie at a 12-guest dinner banquet. If you just sit back and wait for it to come to you, chances are, you're going to miss dessert. — Donald L. Hicks

O soul, leave behind this world of separation
and come with us to the world of union.
How long will you play in this dusty world
like a child filling his skirt with worthless stones?
Cast away the burdens of the earth
and fly upward toward heaven!
Put away your childish care
and join the royal banquet.
Behold the countless ways this body has entrapped you!
Break its deadly hold.
Rise up, lift your head clear of this delusion. — Rumi

The Wine of Love
The wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long:
Sits long and ariseth drunken,
But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth with his own heart,
That great rich Vine. — James Thomson

God tries to first create a joyous yes inside of you, far more than any kind of no ... Just saying no is resentful dieting, whereas finding your deeper yes, and eating from that table, is always a spiritual banquet. — Richard Rohr

that there is some place better than our earthly home - a space where we are accepted no matter what, a banquet table where we are called by name and not ridiculed for being different. — Alice J. Wisler

The old doctrine that God wanted man to do something for him, and that he kept a watchful eye upon all the children of men; that he rewarded the virtuous and punished the wicked, is gradually fading from the mind. We know that some of the worst men have what the world calls success. We know that some of the best men lie upon the straw of failure. We know that honesty goes hungry, while larceny sits at the banquet. We know that the vicious have every physical comfort, while the virtuous are often clad in rags. — Robert Green Ingersoll

But after I'd survived for so long on the scraps from my own emotional table, you spoiled me with a daily banquet of complicitous what-an-asshole looks at parties, surprise bouquets for no occasion, and fridge-magnet notes that always signed off XXXX, Franklin. — Lionel Shriver

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.
The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.
speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962 — John Steinbeck

The sun, the earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet. — Rebecca Harding Davis

And in front of it all are the pearly gates: the proverbial entrance to Heaven that she, in earthly life, thought might not exist. But they are real, not myth or fantasy.
As she passes through them, several people greet her. In foreign tongues even, but she understands. Language no longer matter. There are no barriers between herself and others, just love.
The gorgeous views seem to go on forever. Ornate structures, mansions, banquet halls, and natural beauty, orchards, gardens. People congregate around huge marble fountains. In the distance are snow-capped mountains of the purist white. She can hear the sounds of rushing rivers and the surf of the ocean at once.
Everyone around her is happy, loving, thankful. A choir sings songs of joy and peace while others play musical instruments of every kind in perfect harmony. Children laugh and play in the streets as well as in the clouds above her head. — Victoria Kahler

A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them. — Samuel Johnson

The firelight magnified our shadows, glinted off the silver, flickered high upon the walls; its reflection roared orange in the windowpanes as if a city were burning outside. The whoosh of the flames was like a flock of birds, trapped and beating in a whirlwind near the ceiling. And I wouldn't have been at all surprised if the long mahogany banquet table, draped in linen, laden with china and candles and fruit and flowers, had simply vanished into thin air, like a magic casket in a fairy story. — Donna Tartt

Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed. — Patti Smith

You must strive to multiply bread so that it suffices for the tables of mankind, and not rather favor an artificial control of birth, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life. — Pope Paul VI

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie.
It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for
heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not
the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we
drink in every night. — John Piper

Has Christ provided such a blessed banquet for us? He does not nurse us abroad - but feeds us with His own breast - nay, with His own blood! Let us, then, study to respond to this great love of Christ. It is true, we can never parallel His love. Yet let us show ourselves thankful. We can do nothing satisfactory - but we may do something out of gratitude. Christ gave Himself as a sin-offering for us. Let us give ourselves as a thank-offering for Him. If a man redeems another out of debt - will he not be grateful? How deeply do we stand obliged to Christ - who has redeemed us from hell! — Thomas Watson

How beautiful, then, the marriage of two Christians, two who are one in home, one in desire, one in the way of life they follow, one in the religion they practice ... Nothing divides them either in flesh or in spirit ... They pray together, they worship together, they fast together; instructing one another, encouraging one another, strengthening one another. Side by side they visit God's church and partake God's banquet, side by side they face difficulties and persecution, share their consolations. They have no secrets from one another; they never shun each other's company; they never bring sorrow to each other's hearts ... Seeing this Christ rejoices. To such as these He gives His peace. Where there are two together, there also He is present. — Tertullian

Banquets are always pleasant things, consisting mostly, as they do, of eating and drinking; but the specially nice thing about a banquet is, that it comes when something's over, and there's nothing more to worry about, and to-morrow seems a long way off. — Kenneth Grahame

So die as though your funeral
Ushered you through the doors that led
Into a stately banquet hall
Where heroes banqueted. — Alan Seeger

Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death. — Rosalind Russell

JOHNNY: Friends! Outcasts. Leeches. Undesirables. A blessing on you, and upon this beggars' banquet. This day we draw a line in the chalk, and push back against the bastard pitiless busybody council, and drive them from this place for ever. I, Rooster Byron, your merciless ruler, have decreed that today all my bounty is bestowed upon you, gratis. There will be free booze, bangers, draw, whizz and whatnot, for all the minions of my kingdom. — Jez Butterworth

That she made a point to eat only the gristliest chicken bits, the burned biscuits, the mealiest potatoes, while she complained that his children were, variously, weak-minded, hysterical or sickly, and seemed to imply that such afflictions were the result of the lack of a good piece of steak or a new bonnet, was only circumstance; were she installed on a throne at a twelve-course banquet table teaming with all of God's creatures brought from both air and field, trussed and roasted and swimming in their own succulent juices, she would heap her plate with the most exquisite victuals and lament that his feeble offspring were the way they were because they had it too well and what they really needed was a vat of cold porridge and a tureen full of dirt. — Paul Harding

No one could bear the idea of the White City lying empty and desolate. A Cosmopolitan writer said, Better to have it vanish suddenly, in a blaze of glory, than fall into gradual disrepair and dilapidation. There is no more melancholy spectacle than a festal hall, the morning after the banquet, when the guests have departed and the lights are extinguished. — Erik Larson

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Push on, friend. You're just one exciting step from the banquet hall of life. — Zig Ziglar

In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion. — Quintilian

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. — Aesop

My dearest girl,' said the vampire finally, examining Lord Maccon with an exhausted but appreciative eye, 'such a banquet. Never been one to favor werewolves myself, but he is very well equipped, now, is he not?'
Miss Tarabotti gave him an arch look. 'My goodies,' she warned.
Humans,' chuckled the vampire, 'so possessive. — Gail Carriger

What the first Christians knew as the "New Testament" was not a book, but the Eucharist. In a cultic setting, at a solemn sacrificial banquet, Jesus made an offering of his "body" and "blood." He used traditional sacrificial language. He spoke of the action as his memorial. He told those who attended to repeat the action they had witnessed: "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). — Scott Hahn

My dinners have never interfered with my business. They have been my recreation ... A public banquet, if eaten with thought and care, is no more of a strain than a dinner at home. — Chauncey Depew

You could wait for the world to invite you to the banquet and the ball. Or you could just show up in your red dress and your headdress ready to boogie. — Tama J. Kieves

Three-year-olds have no control over their lives. If you don't want your kids competing in pageants, you hold the power, not them. I sincerely doubt a six-year-old would hitchhike to the banquet room at the Sheraton and compete in the Little Miss Shaker Heights pageant herself if her emotionally damaged Mommy wasn't pushing her. — Adam Carolla

It needs only a good bottle of wine for a roast chicken to be transformed into a banquet. — Gerald Asher

Uh, sure, if it doesn't take too long. I'm supposed to be at a big police banquet in about thirty seconds. They'll probably send a car by for me if I'm late. — Tim Tharp

The best man, then, must legislate, and laws must be passed, but these laws will have no authority when they miss the mark, though in all other cases retaining their authority. But when the law cannot determine a point at all, or not well, should the one best man or should all decide? According to our present practice assemblies meet, sit in judgment, deliberate, and decide, and their judgments an relate to individual cases. Now any member of the assembly, taken separately, is certainly inferior to the wise man. But the state is made up of many individuals. And as a feast to which all the guests contribute is better than a banquet furnished by a single man, so a multitude is a better judge of many things than any individual. — Aristotle.

Of course I do. I love you touching me, Ana. I'm like a starving man at a banquet when it comes to your touch. — E.L. James

When you wear a tattered cloth to a banquet of the honorable, you look weird — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Some of us have lived with those voices for so long that they sound like the truth. They sound like our own voice. They may even sound like God's voice. But they're not. God's voice speaks words of acceptance. Words that give. Words that restore. THE WORD THAT ACCEPTS The night before Jesus died, he gathered with his closest friends and followers in a borrowed banquet room in Jerusalem. There, in the — Bob Hostetler

At Coucy's level, men and women hawked and hunted and carried a favorite falcon, hooded, on the wrist wherever they went, indoors or out - to church, to the assizes, to meals. On occasion, huge pastries were served from which live birds were released to be caught by hawks unleashed in the banquet — Barbara W. Tuchman

Like a sheep invited to a banquet in his honor thrown by wolves. — Pierce Brown

More people have access to education today than ever before. But I cannot help but feel that the modern educational experience is not preparing us adequately to attend the rich banquet of life. Certainly the young people of today have mastered the use of technology and are capable of solving complex scientific and mathematical problems, but who and what do these serve if they cannot think for themselves? If they have no understanding of the meaning and purpose of their own lives? If they do not know who they are as individuals? — Matthew Kelly

But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body. — Seneca.

At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything, and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization. — A. Philip Randolph

You need to understand something, you drink deeply from wells of freedom and liberty and opportunity that you did not dig. You eat lavishly from banquet tables prepared for you by your ancestors. You sit under the shade of trees that you did not plant or cultivate or care for. You have a choice in life, you can just sit back, getting fat, dumb, and happy, consuming all the blessings put before you, or it can metabolize inside of you, become fuel to get you into the fight, to make this democracy real, to make it true to its words that we can be a nation of liberty and justice for all. — Cory Booker

Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send your desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you. — Epictetus

The macabre who lived through the war have a story they loved to tell about the soldiers of the Foreign Legion giving a ball in the expanses around Verdun and dancing with the corpses. Alabama's continued brewing of the poisoned filter for a semiconscious banquet table, her insistence on the magic and glamor of life when she was already feeling its pulse like the throbbing of an amputated leg, had something of the same sinister quality. — Zelda Fitzgerald

Instead of imposing new obligations, (Christians) should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. — Pope Francis

According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.
In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half. — Haruki Murakami

Life is a banquet and most poor s.o.b.'s are starving to death. Auntie Mame — Patrick Dennis

Not only does every Hebrew word have its own definition, but every Hebrew letter, within the word, has its own meaning. God placed before you a great banquet of universal truths. All this in 22 Hebrew letters. Every letter contains a progressive curriculum designed to teach you about this marvelous world that God gave us. These letters will flavor each word's definition claiming its place in God's well organized universe. — Michael Ben Zehabe

I am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead and the flowers faded. — Edward George, Baron George

So comes a reck'ning when the banquet's o'er, The dreadful reckn'ning, and men smile no more. — John Gay