72 Erma Bombeck Quotes

Erma Bombeck quotes

1. A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with the outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.

2. A friend doesn't go on a diet because you're fat.

3. A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend; and he's a priest.

4. All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with white carpet is one of them.

5. Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.

6. Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.

7. Big deal! I'm used to dust.

8. Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?

9. Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

10. Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.

11. God created man, but I could do better.

12. Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed.

13. Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

14. Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter-productivity.

15. Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.

16. I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.

17. I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.

18. I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security, and too tired for an affair.

19. If a man watches three football games in a row he should be declared legally dead.

20. If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.

21. I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.

22. It is fast approaching the point where I don't want to elect anyone stupid enough to want the job.

23. It's nothing short of a miracle that for years women have worked together side by side in the kitchens of America. I would have been willing to bet in an atmosphere of blunt instruments and sharp cutlery, not one of them would have been left alive.

24. I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.

25. In two decades I've lost 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

26. Memory deficiency got so bad with me, I forgot to repeat a piece of gossip I swore on my Grandmother's Grave never to divulge.

27. Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.

28. My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.

29. My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?

30. Never accept a drink from a urologist.

31. Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

32. Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.

33. Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

34. No self respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.

35. Oh, quit being such a Pollyanna.

36. One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.

37. Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.

38. People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.

39. Sexually active coat hangers are at their peak when they are in a small closet. We once lived in an apartment with a closet so small it couldn't support a rod: just two nails. Within a week (the shortest gestation in the history of coat hangers) we had thirty-seven of those little suckers.

40. Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.

41. Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

42. The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

43. There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

44. There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.

45. What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?

46. When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and says he's doing nothing, but the dog is barking, call 911.

47. When humor goes, there goes civilization.

48. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'.

49. When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.

50. When your mother asks, 'Do you want a piece of advice?' it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.

51. Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

52. Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.

53. Youngsters of the age of two or three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.

1. If you cant make it better, you can laugh at it

2. Cats invented self-esteem.

3. To my way of thinking, the American family started to decline when parents began to communicate with their children.

4. The woman who says, 'My kids are all speaking to one another and they love us' is a psychopathic liar.

5. The term 'working mother' is redundant.

6. To say, "Well, I write when I really get into it" is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snowblindness if you have to, but write something.

7. I used everything you gave me.

8. Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, 'No thank you' to desert that night. And for what?!

9. The mole rat is the only rodent born without a fur coat. With a good lawyer, someone would pay for that little oversight.

10. If the nest is truly empty, who owns all this junk?

11. Housework, if it is done properly, can cause brain damage.

12. Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.

13. I have a friend who lives by a three-word philosophy: Seize the Moment. Just possibly, she may be the wisest woman on this planet.

14. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.

15. Babies on television never spit up on the Ultrasuede.

16. Bombeck's Rug Rule: an ugly carpet will last for ever.

17. I became hysterical and frightened and begged for sedation. And that was just the first prenatal visit.

18. I didn't fear old age. I was just becoming increasingly aware of the fact that the only people who said old age was beautiful were usually twenty-three years old.

19. Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted.