Poor men's tables are soon spread. [ Proverb ]

The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. Thou shalt not is their characteristic formula. [ Coleridge ]

Be not too presumptuously sure in any business; for things of this world depend upon such a train of unseen chances that if it were in man's hands to set the tables, yet is he not certain to win the game. [ George Herbert ]

This is he that kiss'd away his hand in courtesy; This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice. That when he plays at tables, chides the dice in honorable terms; nay, he can sing a mean most meanly; and in ushering, mend him who can; the ladies call him sweet; The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet. [ William Shakespeare ]

Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight. [ Emerson ]