Quotes & Sayings About Dinner Tables

I've never done anything so political before. I've spent years shouting my mouth off about serious issues over dinner tables but never really had the confidence to express my views in a song. — George Michael

Dinner, served between 10:00 A.M. and noon, was the main meal of the day. A trumpeter or crier would announce the meal at a castle. When a guest entered, the ladies would curtsey and take their seats. The lord might give the guest a light, quick kiss before showing the guest to his seat at the lord's table. Attendants or pages would bring a washbowl forward and pour water for the guest and lord out of an aquanmanile (an elaborate pitcher). The rest of the diners would wash their hands in a lavabo-type dispenser in the great hall and dry their hands on a long towel. They would then take their seats at the lower trestle tables on benches that often served as their beds at night. The diners were served in order: first the visiting clergy, the visiting nobles, the lord and his family, then the retainers. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I grew up with a lot of dinner table conversations about health care and ways in which the system was inadequate for the needs of many of the patients they took care of. — Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

English tradition debars from dinner-table conversation almost all topics that might interest the conversers and insists upon strict adherence to banalities. — Elspeth Huxley

The hardest exercise for most of us fat people is that one where we push our chairback from the dinner table. — Dolly Parton

How often had men sat around dinner tables and discussed women's lives, their choices, and the reasons why one woman reached across the bed to touch another woman? — Sherman Alexie

and retreat from the busy and hectic day to day daily life or the desire for fresh veggies, gardening can fill that void. In addition to providing some peace for an individual it can also provide a brilliant source of nutrition and cost savings at the dinner table. The drawback that gardeners have had to face is change of seasons, insect and rodent pests as well as fertilizing problems. Gardening methods over the years has taken a pleasant turn for the better as people are trying to re-connect to the natural way of things and are taking an organic approach to raising vegetables and fruits. It is pleasing and inspiring to witness this shift from chemical saturated food going back to the natural way it was meant to be eaten. It thrills me to contribute to this global shift! I hope our children and generations after them have many blessed years of health and abundance at their dinner tables from the positive teachings — Anthony Higgins

The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander. — Oscar Wilde

Writers get exactly the right amount of fame: just enough to get a good table in a restaurant but not enough so that people are constantly interrupting you while you're eating dinner. — Fran Lebowitz

Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage. — Adrienne Rich

At conferences, black boys were assembled. At schools we were herded into auditoriums. At home, mothers summoned us to dinner tables, and there they delivered the news: Our time was short. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The late F. W. H. Myers used to tell how he asked a man at a dinner table what he thought would happen to him when he died. The man tried to ignore the question, but, on being pressed, replied: "Oh well, I suppose I shall inherit eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such unpleasant subjects." — Bertrand Russell

Public opinion should not be confused with popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what people say to one another around their dinner tables. Popular opinion is what they say to callers from polling organizations. — Richard Brookhiser

I have a really interesting political point of view, and its not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you cant go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You cant. I wouldnt wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since. — Robert Downey Jr.

Our country's political discourse and debate are enriched by discussions of the political implications of our faith traditions, whether they are taking place in our communities, at our dinner tables, or in our places of worship. — David Price

Her passion is hard to forget. I still remember one dinner at my grandfather's house. The whole extended family was there, and Marti, at the time, refused to eat at the same table where flesh was being served. Half the family was fine with that. But the other half wanted chicken. The solution? We had to set up two separate tables in the dining room
a meat table and a nonmeat table. My diplomatic grandparents didn't want to take sides, so they sat at a third table in the middle, a dietary DMZ/ — A. J. Jacobs

People crave trustworthy information about the world we live in. Some people want it because it is essential to the way they make a living. Some want it because they regard being well-informed as a condition of good citizenship. Some want it because they want something to exchange over dinner tables and water coolers. — Bill Keller

Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff. — Boris Johnson

[The Fitzgeralds] rode down Fifth Avenue on the top of taxis because it was hot or dove into the fountain at Union Square or tried to undress at the Scandals, or, in sheer delight at the splendor of new York, jumped, dead sober, into the Pulitzer fountain in front of the Plaza. Fitzgerald got in fights with waiters and Zelda danced on people's dinner tables. — Arthur Mizener

But this is what I'm finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I'm waiting for, for that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets - this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience. — Shauna Niequist

Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life. — A.C. Grayling

MY TOUGHEST MATCH; is not on the mat. It's at the dinner table and it's at fast food restaurants. It's hearing about the party I can Never go to. It's realizing being a Great Wrestler isn't a sport, It's a LIFE. — Stephen Neal

I grew up in a show biz family and, if you wanted to talk at the dinner table, you'd better be prepared to talk about film. — John Orloff

When the waitress puts the dinner on the table, the old men look at the dinner. The young men look at the waitress. — Gelett Burgess

I serve dinner in three phases: serve the food, clear the table, bury the dead. — Phyllis Diller

Secretary Clinton is tough, smart, and understands better than any candidate the challenges that parents are talking about around dinner tables and keeping families up at night. — Thomas Perez

What's the deal with putting animal feet on tubs? It's like insisting that all pianos should have tails, or dinner tables should have scrotal sacs. One of the things we like about tubs is their immobility, their general disinclination to bolt out of the room, scramble down the stairs, and make for the woods in a blind feral panic. — James Lileks

But these conversations require time and space, and we say we're too busy. Distracted at our dinner tables and living rooms, at our business meetings, and on our streets, we find traces of a new "silent spring" - a term Rachel Carson coined when we were ready to see that with technological change had come an assault on our environment. Now, we have arrived at another moment of recognition. This time, technology is implicated in an assault on empathy. We have learned that even a silent phone inhibits conversations that matter. — Sherry Turkle

As Jogiches walked in with her past the potted plants in the entrance, to face the smiles and all the food laid out on little tables, he whispered: 'As soon as this dinner is over, I shall kill you... — John Peter Nettl

Thailand's seafood industry is the third largest in the world. And much of it is ending up on our dinner tables. — Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

Best of stories are created at Airports, Dinner Tables and Showers! — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

My brother Julio and I worked to improve the quality of wines from California and to put fine wine on American dinner tables at a price people could afford — Ernest Gallo

Angels cry because they want to experience what you and I feel: the moment. They live in eternity. They dont know what it is like to read a newspaper and get ink on your fingers. They dont know what it is like to take your shoes off and wiggle your toes under the dinner table. — Carlos Santana

Buckwheat, like Marmite and durian, is a seriously divisive foodstuff, so it needs a seriously capable defence team if it's ever going to make it on to most people's dinner tables. — Yotam Ottolenghi

I've been really opinionated my whole life. I was raised to be opinionated. I was raised to debate at the dinner table - my father demanded it - and you had to be able to debate in a confident and clear way. — Jeanine Tesori

Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream. "Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro - not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too," he remembered. — Leo Tolstoy

Embrace the common: a Sunday afternoon watching sports, Starbucks with a friend, cooking dinner for a neighbor, taking the dog for a walk, heading to a job that is making you more humble and needy because it is so unfulfilling, or working through conflict with a friend you have offended. This and more is all part of it. So do your everyday and your ordinary. Godliness is found and formed in those places. No man or woman greatly used by God has escaped them. Great men and women of God have transformed the mundane, turning neighborhoods into mission fields, parenting into launching the next generation of God's voices, legal work into loving those most hurting, waiting tables into serving and loving in such a way that people see our God. — Jennie Allen

The family dinner table is the cornerstone of civilization and those who 'graze' from refrigerators or in front of the television sets are doomed to remain in a state of savagery. — Judith Martin

The other half, Lost Tokyo-1, has not been located yet, although presumably it exists out there somewhere in the universe, a mega-demi-city of eighty-five million people, a city fractured, cracker in half, torn, ripped not cleanly, but shredded, ragged, ripped along living rome, plans, meetings, dates, conjugal beds in prisons, family dinner tables, secrets being whispered into ears, couples holding hands, separated in an instant without warning or explanation, leaving two halves, bewildered, speaking Japanese to instant neighbours from the other side of the world, unable to understand what has happened, or if things will ever go back to the way they were, hoping its other half might someday find its way back. — Charles Yu

A successful dinner is one that lasts a while and one where everyone leaves happy. It's a meal where we didn't just wolf food down, rather something else happened at the table. That is the goal. — Laurie David

In the world of The Age of Innocence, a financial disaster or moral scandal would permanently exile a guest from the finest dinner tables. In contemporary New York, a mere change of fashion can eliminate a place setting; therefore, the need to maintain a rigidity not of morals, but of taste, seems all the more desperate. — Wendy Wasserstein

Fyodor Pavlovich, for example, began with practically nothing, was a landowner of the very least important category, went trotting around other people's dinner tables, aspired to the rank of sponge, but at the moment of his decease turned out to possess something to the tune of one hundred thousand roubles in ready money. And yet at the same time he had persisted all his life in being one of the most muddle-headed madcaps in the whole of our district. I repeat: here there was no question of stupidity; the bulk of these madcaps are really quite sharp and clever - but plain muddle-headedness, and, moreover, of a peculiar, national variety. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky