“The Federal commissioners sat down across the mahogany table from their Southern hosts. After a couple of minutes of chitchat meant to be polite- but during which the three Confederates managed to avoid speaking directly to Butler- Seward said, "Gentlemen, shall we attempt to repair the unpleasantness that lies between our two governments?" "Had you acknowledged from the outset that this land contained to governments, sir, all the unpleasantness, as you call it, would have been avoided," Alexander Stephens pointed out. Like his body, his voice was light and thin. "That may be true, but it's moot now," Stanton said. "Let's deal with the situation as we have it, shall we? Otherwise useless recriminations will take up all our time and lead us nowhere. It was, if I may say so, useless recriminations on both sides that led to the breach between North and South."”

— Harry Turtledove , book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 226

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Harry Turtledove 48

American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian 1949

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Variant of:
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The Harlequin, Volume 2, 1959, University of Virginia (page ? http://books.google.com/books?id=zdFKAAAAYAAJ&q=%22under+the+table%22+%22under+the+host%22)
Perhaps attributed due to “One more drink and I'd have been under the host.” (see above).
“ Martini Madness: Dorothy Parker didn’t write the famous quatrain about martinis that’s always attributed to her. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/features/2013/martini_madness_tournament/sweet_16/dorothy_parker_martini_poem_why_the_attribution_is_spurious.html”, Troy Patterson, Slate, April 8, 2013
Misattributed
Variant: One martini. Two at the most. Three I'm under the table, four I'm under the host!
Source: The Collected Dorothy Parker

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Harry Turtledove 48

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