Table Etiquette Quotes

And you yourself always be seated at the middle fo the high table that your presence as lord or lady may appear openly to all, and that you may plainly see on either side all the service and all the faults.

I was brought up in a way that when you're at a dinner party, you don't grab a chip unless it's been offered to everyone else. It's the manners of being brought up by English parents.

Don't touch my napkin. I do not want the server to pick up the napkin and put it on my lap. I know it belongs there; maybe I don't choose to put it there.

Basil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.

As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.

The first time I saw a fingerbowl was at the home of my benefactress. [...] The water had a few cherry blossoms in it, and I thought it must be some clear sort of Japanese after-dinner soup and ate every bit of it, including the crisp little blossoms.

At the Last Supper how come no one sat on the other side of the table? See, I think originally there were people sitting on the other side but those were the people going, You know, the air conditioning hits me right on the back on the neck.

When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

I’d discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty.

Canadians are very well behaved, they don't throw their food.

I can think back to being four or five and not wanting to sit at the kids' table because I thought it was demeaning. I was this ridiculous little kid.

It's a great battle, and it really is a battle, and there are people from all walks of life, you know, never judge anybody at the table: A man can be the greatest poker player and he might know all the numbers, but he might get beaten by a really savvy kid who works in a grocery store; and that's what's so great about this game.

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.

I remember watching steak being cooked on TV and wanting to try it. As a special treat, my mother cooked it for me, and I thought this would be the time I would eat with a knife and fork. Alas, I ate it with chopsticks!

Diapers do not belong on the same table as food.

Speake not of a dead man at the table.

The beautiful thing about poker is that everybody thinks they can play.

Dress simply. If you wear a dinner jacket, don't wear anything else on it ... like lunch or dinner.

By insisting on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being drawn, and calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve. For this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as carefully as the wine.

A child should always say what's true, And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table: At least as far as he is able.

No? Part girl, part wolf? Do they lick their butter knives?

I can judge a restaurant by its bread: it winds me up that a lot of places buy pre-packed ones in and don't bother putting them in the oven to crisp them up again. And you shouldn't put bread on a side-plate: it needs to be pushed back into the centre of the table.

I try not to be superstitious, but, you know, we never put any shoes on the table. That's totally against the law in our house. And I always salute when I see one magpie.

My notion of an elegant table is you don't leave the knife sticking out of the mayonnaise jar.

Good manners: The noise you don't make when you're eating soup.