Erma Bombeck's Witty Quotes

Quotes from Erma Bombeck



Spend at least one Mother's Day with your respective mothers before you decide on marriage. If a man gives his mother a gift certificate for a flu shot, dump him.
My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.
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.
I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.
Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.
Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop offs at tedium and counter productivity.
There's a territorial ritual to an aerobics class. I entered a class for the first time a few years ago and ended up where no one wanted to be...in the front row next to the mirror. It was three years before I could work my way to the back row.
How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?
Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.
I have never gone to the bathroom in my life that a small voice on the other side of the door hasn't whined, "Are you saving the bananas for anything?"
Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip.
Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-rearing, they are unemployed.
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.
Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.
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.
Why is it when you want a nice souvenir, you find a great shell in a gift shop, but some yo-yo has affixed a ten-cent thermometer to it?
Kids have little computer bodies with disks that store information. They remember who had to do the dishes the last time you had spaghetti, who lost the knob off the Tv set six years ago, who got punished for teasing the dog when he wasn't teasing the dog and who had to wear girls boots the last time it snowed.
Who, in their infinite wisdom, decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
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.
No self-respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.
On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies and the sand out of our belongings.
Mother's words of wisdom: "Answer me! Don't talk with food in your mouth!"
All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with white carpet is one of them.
Most children's first words are "Mama" or "Daddy." Mine were, "Do I have to use my own money?"
Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.
I remember buying a set of black plastic dishes once, after I saw an ad on television where they actually put a blowtorch to them and they emerged unscathed. Exactly one week after I bought them, one of the kids brought a dinner plate to me with a large crack in it. When I asked what happened to it, he said it hit a tree. I don't want to talk about it.
My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch on fire or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one cares. Why should you?
Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.
Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, "What light?" and two more to say, "I didn't turn it on."
Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.
Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" Wasn't there any change?"
I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.
The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you a re served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, "Could I get you your check?" and we answered, "How about the menu first?"
Mothers have to remember what food each child likes or dislikes, which one is allergic to penicillin and hamster fur, who gets carsick and who isn't kidding when he stands outside the bathroom door and tells you what's going to happen if he doesn't get in right away. It's tough. If they all have the same hair color they tend to run together.
When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there's a wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.
When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they're not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They're upset because they've gone from supervisor of a child's life to a spectator. It's like being the vice president of the United States.


Christmas Shopping: Wouldn't it be wonderful to find one gift that you didn't have to dust, that had to be used right away, that was practical, fit everyone, was personal and would be remembered for a long time? I penciled in "Gift certificate for a flu shot."



"Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids."
"My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first one being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint."
"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."
"If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead."
"The only reason I would take up jogging is so I could hear heavy breathing again."
"Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage."
"Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely."
"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.'"
"In general, my children refused to eat anything that hadn't danced on TV."
"When humor goes, there goes civilization."
"Seize the moment. Think of all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart."

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.
A friend doesn't go on a diet because you're fat.
A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend; and he's a priest.
All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with white carpet is one of them.
Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.
Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.
Big deal! I'm used to dust.
Erma Bombeck's requested epitaph
Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
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.
God created man, but I could do better.
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.
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter-productivity.
Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.
I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
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.
I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security, and too tired for an affair.
If a man watches three football games in a row he should be declared legally dead.
If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.
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.
It is fast approaching the point where I don't want to elect anyone stupid enough to want the job.
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.
I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.
In two decades I've lost 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.
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?
Never accept a drink from a urologist.
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
No self respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.
Oh, quit being such a Pollyanna.
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.
Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.
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.
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.
Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.
Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
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.
What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?
When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and says he's doing nothing, but the dog is barking, call 911.
When humor goes, there goes civilization.
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".
When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.
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.
Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.
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.