1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
“Never sit a table when you can stand at the bar.”
The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D. C., right now.
Wang Yu-chi (2014) cited in " China and Taiwan in first government talks http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-26129171" on BBC, 11 February 2014
“O! what's a table richly spread
Without a woman at its head!”
"The Progress of Discontent" (1750), line 39.
2010s, 2016, January, Speech at (18 January 2016)
Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as reported by Anadolu Agency on 3 June 2015 http://aa.com.tr/en/politics/erdogan-did-not-attend-un-dinner-to-avoid-egypts-sisi/40683
About
In disparagement of the French revolution and its practitioners.
[Barrington, Jonah, Personal sketches and recollections of his own times, Chapter XVII https://archive.org/details/personalsketche06barrgoog]
