Erma Bombeck Quotes:

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

Topics: Family, Mom, Mother, Joys Of Motherhood, Judgment Of Others

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

Topics: Dream, Courage, Kindness, Inspirational Courage, I Had A Dream

Cats invented self-esteem.

Topics: Self Esteem, Cat, Self

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

Topics: Memorable, Terrorism, Oblivion, Tedium, Chores

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

Topics: Funny Inspirational, Children, White, Parenthood Funny, Having Children

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

source: - Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Humorous, Medical Doctor, Medical Education

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

source: - Time Magazine (1984), later quoted in Jonathon Lazear and Wendy Lazear "Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much" (p. 22), 1993.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Laughter, Inspirational Strong Women, Inspire Women

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

Topics: Christmas, Spiritual, Morning, Humorous Christmas, Christmas Eve

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.

Topics: 4th Of July, Kids, Gun, Independence Day Patriotic, July 4

Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.

Topics: Religious, Cheese, Toasters, Chores, Ovens

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

Topics: Funny, Kids, Car

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

Topics: Summer, Mother, Hurt, Thirteen, Summer Is Coming

Children make your life important.

Topics: Children, Important, Literature

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.

Topics: Funny, Family, Mom, Perfect Parents, Raising Kids

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.

Topics: Funny, Wedding, Husband, Your Husband, Swimsuits

He opened the jar of pickles when no one else could. He was the only one in the house who wasn't afraid to go into the basement by himself. He cut himself shaving, but no one kissed it or got excited about it. It was understood when it rained, he got the car and brought it around to the door. When anyone was sick, he went out to get the prescription filled. He took lots of pictures... but he was never in them.

Topics: Daughter, Cutting, Doors

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.

Topics: Children, Ideas, Two, Turn Off

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

Topics: Happiness, Hurt, Laughter, Tragedy And Comedy, Smile And Laughter

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

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Life, Gravy, Family Thanksgiving

The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.

Topics: Hilarious, Food, Odds, Murphys Law

Friends are "annuals" that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a "perennial" that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There's a place in the garden for both of them.

Topics: Funny Friendship, Garden, Years, Drought, Annuals

Never order food in excess of your body weight.

Topics: Badass, Order, Racist, Body Weight

It's [motherhood] the biggest on-the-job- training program in existence today.

Topics: Jobs, Motherhood, Training, Training Programs, Job Training

With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It's all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.

Topics: Boys, Air, Trying, Where You Stand, Cleaners

Never have more children than you have car windows.

Topics: Funny, Life, Witty

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

Topics: Soccer, Sports, Football, American Football, Funny Sports

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

Topics: Mother, Running, Holiday

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

Topics: Loss, Two, Literature, Inspirational Weight Loss, Bracelet

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.

Topics: Spring, Real, Coffee, Masculinity, Freezer

When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.

source: - RuPaul (2010). “Workin' It!: RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style”, p.22, Harper Collins

Topics: Cookies, Tough, Inspirational Office, Libraries And Librarians, Life Is Tough

Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

Topics: Mom, Mother, Years, Small Gifts, Cardboard Boxes

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

Topics: Inspiration, Car, Buzzards

I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so.

Topics: Mother, Thinking, Knowing, I Love My Mother, Mothering

Some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love - why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there....

Topics: Real, Love You, Pride

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

Topics: Happiness, Laughter, Humor, Humor And Laughter, Humor Laughter

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.

Topics: Mother, Men, Giving

Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.

Topics: Mother, Children, Giving

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

Topics: Car, Onions, Onion Rings, Cushions

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.

Topics: Dog, Two, Age, Dump, Youngsters

I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night ...

Topics: Night, Thinking, One Day

Every puppy should have a boy.

Topics: Boys, Puppy, Should

Family life got better and we got our car back - as soon as we put 'I love Mom' on the license plate.

Topics: Funny, Family, Mom, Love Mom, License Plate

If I had my life to live over, instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished ever moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

Topics: Pregnancy, Miracle, Wish, Chances In Life, Beautiful Pregnancy

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television.

Topics: Funny, Family, Children, Funny Parent

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.

Topics: Beach, Vacation, Skins, Sunny Day, Long Vacation

...I remember thinking how often we look, but never see...we listen, but never hear...we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.

Topics: Laughter, Thinking, Voice, Human Voice

Families aren't easy to join. They're like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.

Topics: Family, Country, Demand, Country Clubs

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.

Topics: Motivation, Women, Sleep, Unmade Beds

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

Topics: Travel, Home, Humor

We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

Topics: Taken, Memorable, Fighting

Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it's still snowing.

Topics: Mom, Children, Home, Clean House

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?

Topics: Mother, Brother, Bed, Spanking

It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Communication, Effective Communication

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.

Topics: Giving, House, Labels

It was a bitter moment for us. We weren't two mature parents. We were just two kids playing grown-up. We still needed Mommy and Daddy's permission, blessings, and money to survive.

Topics: Kids, Blessing, Two, Mommy And Daddy, Kids Playing

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

Topics: Night, Thinking, Desert, Dessert First

The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms. . . and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.

Topics: Family, Character, Trying, Brothers And Sisters, Life Is Pain

There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.

Topics: Funny Life, Looks, World

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

Topics: Funny, Running, Sex, Inspirational Track, Funny Running

It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have...One pair that see through closed doors. Another in the back of her head...and, of course, the ones in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word.

Topics: Mom, Mother, Children, Goofs

The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a mother must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.

Topics: Mother, Art, Sex

. . . but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute - look at it and really see it - live it - and never give it back.

Topics: Giving, Looks, Shots, Live Each Day, Sweating

The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

Topics: Tanks, Grass, Greener, Grass Is Always Greener, Grass Is Greener On The Other Side

For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Marriage, Husband To Be, Inspirational Wedding

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 is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.

Topics: Family, Mother, Children

I just clipped 2 articles from a current magazine. One is a diet guaranteed to drop 5 pounds off my body in a weekend. The other is a recipe for a 6 minute pecan pie.

Topics: Weekend, Pie, Pecans, Pecan Pie

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.

Topics: Mother, Fun, Water, Measuring, Soap And Water

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.

Topics: Home, Forever, Spices, Egyptian

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.

Topics: Girl, Dog, Kids, Disk

Never accept a drink from a urologist.

Topics: Drinking, Humor, Alcohol

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

Topics: Family, Food, Cereal, Funny Family, Family Planning

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.

Topics: Mother, Retirement, Children, Supervisors, Empty Nest

One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone.

Topics: Country, Travel, Fall, Foreign Countries

Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation's compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain love for one another.

Topics: 4th Of July, Caring, Compassion, Inspirational Volunteer, Unselfish Love

It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line.

Topics: Dream, Lines, Uncommon

Myths that need clarification: "No matter how many times you see the Grand canyon, you are still emotionally moved to tears." False. It depends on how many children the out-of-towners brought with them who kicked the back of your seat from Phoenix to Flagstaff and got their gum caught in your hair.

Topics: Children, Phoenix, Hair, Clarification, Grand Canyon

Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase.

Topics: Sports, Football, Shopping, Contact Sports, Noisy

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

Topics: Lazy, Literature, Housework

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.

Topics: Dream, Lonely, Clever, Lonely Path, Lonely Places

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

Topics: Funny, Friendship, Laughter, Old Boyfriend

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

Topics: Thanksgiving, Sports, Food, Inspirational Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day

What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?

Topics: Food, Mean, Talking, Wishbones, Inspirational Thanksgiving

A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween.

Topics: Relationship, Fun, Halloween, Inspirational Halloween, Mother And Grandmother

Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.

Topics: Inspirational, Laughter, Humor, Humor Laughter

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

Topics: Family, Mom, Mother, Spring Cleaning, Chores

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.

Topics: Children, Funny Life, Hate

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

Topics: Success, Determination, Greatness, Helen

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

Topics: Funny, Witty, Humorous, Mentally Tough, National Lampoon

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.

Topics: Sex, Giving Up, Women, Polling

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?

Topics: Funny, Block, Fire, Chores, Clean House

It's frightening to wake up one morning and discover that while you were asleep you went out of style.

Topics: Morning, Style, Wake Up

A child needs your love most when he deserves it least

Topics: Children, Needs, Deserve

As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.

Topics: Children, Book, School, Library Books, Grades In School

Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.

Topics: Car, Designer, Come Up

Everyone I talked to was a recording-the bank, the elevator, your office, the school, a wrong number. You used to be able to call a wrong number and get a person.

Topics: School, Numbers, Office, Wrong Number, Answering Machines

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

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Travel, Empowering Women, Carousels

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

Topics: Spiritual, Trying, Keep Trying

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.

Topics: Clothes, Lucky, Realizing, National Geographic

Housework can kill you if done right.

Topics: Work, Drinking, Done, Housework, Housekeeping

I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food

Topics: Funny, Humorous, Food

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.

Topics: Food, Carpe Diem, Weight Loss, Seize The Moment, Delicious Food

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'.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, God, Just Live Your Life, Kickass Women

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

Topics: Tired, Literature, Paper, Social Security

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

Topics: Running, Dog, Children, Barking Dogs, Parenthood Funny

When you leave them in the morning, they stick their nose in the door crack and stand there like a portrait until you turn the key eight hours later.

Topics: Dog, Morning, Keys, Dog Training, Two Dogs

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

Topics: Inspirational, Witty, Happy Mothers Day, Funny Parent, Funny Parenting

I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: 'Checkout Time is 18 years.'

Topics: Time, Children, Views, Raising Children, Checkouts

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

Topics: Ideas, Rooms, Glances, Spring Cleaning, Chores

How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?

Topics: Goes On, Literature, Next

Next to hot chicken soup, a tattoo of an anchor on your chest, and penicillin, I consider a honeymoon one of the most overrated events in the world.

Topics: Tattoo, Anchors, World, Penicillin, Chicken Soup

One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip.

Topics: Husband, Wife, Different

Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a mother, I'll tell them: I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom and what time you would get home. ... I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a creep. I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to a drugstore and confess, 'I stole this.' ... But most of all I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it. That was the hardest part of all.

Topics: Mother, Children, Home

Grandparenthood is one of life's rewards for surviving your own children.

Topics: Children, Rewards, Surviving

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

Topics: Junk, Nests, Empty

He who laughs.....lasts.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.46, Open Road Media

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Happiness

The term 'working mother' is redundant.

Topics: Mother, Term, Redundant

Maybe age is kinder to us than we think. With my bad eyes, I can't see how bad I look, and with my rotten memory, I have a good excuse for getting out of a lot of stuff.

Topics: Memories, Eye, Thinking, Kinder

It is my theory you can't get rid of fat. All you can do is move it around, like furniture.

Topics: Funny, Moving, Furniture

The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track?

Topics: Wall, Food, Track, Red Meat, Hippopotamus

Kids need love the most when they're acting most unlovable.

Topics: Forgiveness, Kids, Acting, Need Love, Unlovable

Encourage independence in your children by regularly losing them in the supermarket.

Topics: Children, Independence, Losing

I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless. They crash . . . you add a longer tail . . . you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they'll fly.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.85, Open Road Media

Topics: Running, Children, Wind

If I had my life to live over I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

Topics: Rose, Storage, Burned

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

Topics: Men, Hair, Growing

Time. It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by the for young, and runs out for the aged.

Topics: Running, Bored, Elude

I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

Topics: Fighting, Way, Vegetarian, Funny Bumper Sticker, Food Chain

Success is outliving your failures

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

Topics: Brain, Done, Damage

Women are never what they seem to be. There is the woman you see and there is the woman who is hidden. Buy the gift for the woman who is hidden.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2011). “At Wit's End”, p.215, Fawcett

Topics: Women, Seems

I worry about scientists discovering that lettuce has been fattening all along.

Topics: Worry, Scientist, Fattening, Lettuce

Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.

source: - "Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession".

Topics: Mother, Hands, Years, Ambivalence, Faceless

A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.230, Open Road Media

Topics: Growing Up, Zippers, Grandparent, Shoelaces

There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, 'Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams.' Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, 'How good or how bad am I?' That's where courage comes in.

Topics: Dream, People, Acting, Dreams You Have

When humor go's, there go's civilization.

Topics: Civilization, Sense Of Humor

I read one psychologist's theory that said, "Never strike a child in your anger." When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he's recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on Sunday?

Topics: Family, Children, Sunday, Measles

Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.

Topics: Fashion, Design, Literature, Anatomy, Flunking

Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted. Every evening they disappear. Most parents never imagine how hard they try to please us, and how miserable they feel when they think they have failed.

Topics: Sunset, Kids, Thinking

A member of the committee slapped a name tag over my left bosom. "What shall we name the other one?" I smiled. She was not amused.

Topics: Funny, Humorous, Names, Amused

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.

Topics: Writing, Typewriters, Long

The fact was I didn't want to look my age, but I didn't want to act the age I wanted to look either. I also wanted to grow old enough to understand that sentence.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Aunt Erma's Cope Book: How To Get From Monday To Friday . . . In 12 Days”, p.49, Open Road Media

Topics: Age, Looks, Want

It is ludicrous to read the microwave direction on the boxes of food you buy, as each one will have a disclaimer: THIS WILL VARY WITH YOUR MICROWAVE. Loosely translated, this means, You're on your own, Bernice.

Topics: Food, Mean, Boxes, Microwaves, Disclaimers

Pregnancy is the only time in a woman's life she can help God work a miracle.

Topics: Pregnancy, Miracle, Helping

My son would walk to the refrigerator-freezer and fling both doors open and stand there until the hairs in his nose iced up. After surveying $200 worth of food in varying shapes and forms, he would declare loudly, 'There's nothing to eat!'

Topics: Food, Son, Hair, Freezer

Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, its unplanned, it's full of suprises.

Topics: Wonderful, Surprise, Spontaneity, Outburst, Unbridled Passion

I was trampled to death by a man who believed his luggage would be the first piece off. If he were an experienced traveler, he would know that the first piece of luggage belongs to no one. It's just a dummy suitcase to give everyone hope.

Topics: Funny, Food, Humorous, Air Travel

Let me put it this way. According to my girth, I should be a ninety-foot redwood.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.110, Open Road Media

Topics: Feet, Way, Redwoods, Girth

Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain.

Topics: Pain, Watches, Someone You Love, Never Underestimate

Kids are without a doubt the most suspicious diners in the world. They will eat mud (raw or baked) rocks, paste, crayons, ball-point pens, moving goldfish, cigarette butts, and cat food. Try to coax a little beef stew into their mouths and they look at you like a puppy when you stand over him with the Sunday paper rolled up.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.292, Open Road Media

Topics: Moving, Cat, Kids, Little Bee, Cat Food

No baby shall at any time be quartered in a house where there are no soft laps, no laughter, or no love.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.46, Open Road Media

Topics: Baby, Laughter, House

Adults are always telling young people, 'These are the best years of your life.' Are they? I don't know. Sometimes when adults say this to children I look into their faces. They look like someone on the top seat of the Ferris wheel who has had too much cotton candy and barbecue. They'd like to get off and be sick but everyone keeps telling them what a good time they're having.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2011). “At Wit's End”, p.142, Fawcett

Topics: Children, Best Years Of Your Life, People, Ferris Wheels, Cotton Candy

Most mothers entering the labor market outside the home are naive. They stagger home each evening, holding mail in their teeth, the cleaning over their arm, a lamb chop defrosting under each armpit, balancing two gallons of frozen milk between their knees, and expect one of the kids to get the door.

Topics: Mother, Home, Kids, Armpits

If God had meant us to walk around naked, he would never have invented the wicker chair.

Topics: Naked, Nudity, Chairs

I am always behind the shopper at the grocery store who has stitched her coupons in the lining of her coat and wants to talk about a 'strong' chicken she bought two weeks ago. The register tape also runs out just before her sub-total. In the public restroom, I always stand behind the teen-ager who is changing into her band uniform for a parade and doesn't emerge until she has combed the tassels on her boots, shaved her legs, and recovered her contact lens from the commode.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2011). “I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression”, p.9, Fawcett

Topics: Running, Strong, Two, Contact Lenses, Restroom

For years, my husband and I have advocated separate vacations. But the kids keep finding us.

source: - Erma Bombeck, Bil Keane (2011). “Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own!”, p.70, Fawcett

Topics: Husband, Kids, Vacation

I learned the importance of a man's chair early in life. I learned that he may love several wives, embrace several cars, be true to more than one political philosophy, and be equally committed to several careers, but he will have only one comfortable chair in his life. I learned it will be an ugly chair. It will match nothing in the entire house. It will never wear out.

Topics: Philosophy, Men, Careers

There is so much to teach, and the time goes so fast.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2011). “At Wit's End”, p.143, Fawcett

Topics: Teach

A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn't charge more after midnight - or anything before midnight.

source: - Erma Bombeck (1997). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.161, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Baby, Grandparent, Midnight

What makes people laugh? . . . It's a happy marriage between a person who needs to laugh and someone who's got one to give.

Topics: Laughter, People, Giving

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

Topics: Mom, Mother, White, Little League

Any mother with half a skull knows that when Daddy's little boy becomes Mommy's little boy, the kid is so wet he's treading water.

source: - Erma Bombeck (1997). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.5, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Mother, Kids, Boys, Treading Water

Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession”, p.8, Open Road Media

Topics: Religious, Motherhood, Political, Ethnic Background

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip.

Topics: Baseball, Gossip, Pastime

For the first two years of a child's life, we spend every waking hour tryibg to get the child to communicate. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out how we can reverse the process.

Topics: Funny, Baby, Children

I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.

Topics: Inspirational, Morning, Teenage, Outfits, Fashion Accessory

In the South Pacific, because of their size, mosquitoes are required to file flight plans.

Topics: Mosquitoes, Size, Flight, Pacific

My sister and I never engaged in sibling rivalry. Our parents weren't that crazy about either one of us.

Topics: Sister, Sibling, Crazy, Sibling Rivalry

People usually survive their illnesses, but the paper work eventually does them in. Filing a claim for insurance is terminal.

Topics: Funny, Humorous, Doctors

... it's simply wrong to always order [kids] to stop that fighting. There are times when one child is simply defending his rights and damned well should be fighting.

Topics: Children, Kids, Fighting

Once you see the drivers in Indonesia you understand why religion plays such a part in their lives.

Topics: Travel, Play, Indonesia

As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.

Topics: Creativity, School, Creative

The bad times I can handle. It's the good times that drive me crazy. When is the other shoe going going to drop?

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.155, Open Road Media

Topics: Crazy, Shoes, Good Times, Drive Me Crazy

The fact that Americans drag around the world by the busloads to glimpse the past probably has something to do with the youth of our country. We revere anything older than George Burns.

Topics: Funny, Country, Humorous

Hello there. I'm out social climbing, but if you leave your name and number and if you're anybody, I'll get back to you.

Topics: Climbing, Names, Numbers

There is one thing I have never taught my body how to do and that is to figure out at 6 A.M. what it wants to eat at 6 P.M.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.196, Open Road Media

Topics: Body, Want, Taught

Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what.

Topics: Worry, Like You

You always hear about fashion's success stories. How a starlet lost an earring one night and by the next morning, the entire country was wearing one earring. Or how sweaters made a comeback in a drugstore, or a First Lady influenced how we dressed during her reign. But what about the losers? The fashions that came and went out the same day? The hopes and dreams of designers that were shattered by the sound of fifty million women ... laughing themselves to death.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.107, Open Road Media

Topics: Country, Dream, Fashion, One Night, Earrings

I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill.

Topics: Sports, Hills, Skiing, Ambulance, Skiers

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.

source: - Erma Bombeck (1996). “Four of a Kind: A Suburban Field Guide”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

Topics: Beautiful, Years, People, Three Year Olds

I used everything you gave me.

Topics: Inspirational, Inspirational Life, Meaning Of Life

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.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.340, Open Road Media

Topics: Philosophy, Three, May, Seize The Moment

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

source: - Erma Bombeck (2009). “Eat Less Cottage Cheese and More Ice Cream: Thoughts on Life from Erma Bombeck”, p.20, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Topics: Dinner, Sofas, Carpet

Babies should enjoy the freedom to vocalize whether it be in church, a public meeting place, during a movie, or after hours when the lights are out. They have not yet learned that joy and laughter have to last a lifetime and must be conserved.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.46, Open Road Media

Topics: Funny, Baby, Laughter, After Hours

There was a time when the respect and trust my children had for me would have made you sick to your stomach. They believed I could blow on a red traffic light and turn it green.

source: - Erma Bombeck, Bil Keane (2011). “Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own!”, p.139, Fawcett

Topics: Children, Blow, Light, Traffic Light, Trust And Respect

I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up.

Topics: Blow, Brain, Mind, Overload, Human Mind

I don't think women outlive men, Doctor. It only seems longer.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2011). “At Wit's End”, p.28, Fawcett

Topics: Men, Thinking, Doctors

If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.10, Open Road Media

Topics: Pits, Life Is, Cherries

With girls, everything looks great on the surface. But beware of drawers that won't open. They contain a three-month supply of dirty underwear, unwashed hose, and rubber bands with blobs of hair in them.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession”, p.40, Open Road Media

Topics: Girl, Dirty, Hair, Rubber Bands

With boys, you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.196, Open Road Media

Topics: Boys, Path, Hurricanes, Where You Stand

Motherhood isn't just a series of contractions; it's a state of mind. From the moment we know life is inside us, we feel a responsibility to protect and defend that human being.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From America's Favorite Humorist”, p.240, Open Road Media

Topics: Responsibility, Motherhood, Mind, Responsibility To Protect

Cats invented self-esteem; there is not an insecure bone in their body.

Topics: Self Esteem, Cat, Insecure

All of a sudden, I feel very old and very tired. Maybe when I get to California, the smog, brush fires, floods, and earthquakes will cheer me up.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “The Erma Bombeck Collection: If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Motherhood, and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank”, p.348, Open Road Media

Topics: Funny, Cheer, Tired, Smog, Cheer Me Up

I firmly believe kids don't want your understanding. They want your trust, your compassion, your blinding love and your car keys, but you try to understand them and you're in big trouble.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2013). “If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?”, p.110, Open Road Media

Topics: Believe, Kids, Compassion, Car Keys

I've decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it.

Topics: Dog, Hate, Book

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.

Topics: Inspirational, Mothers Day, Mom, Yes Or No, Being A Mother

When you're lecturing teenagers and they begin to hum and leave the room, you can sense there is hostility.

Topics: Teenager, Rooms, Adolescence, Lecturing

You show me a boy who brings a snake home to his mother and I'll show you an orphan.

Topics: Mother, Home, Boys

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

Topics: Love, Marriage, Funny Relationship, Humor Love, Marriage Advice For Newlyweds

Know the difference between success and fame. Success is Mother Teresa. Fame is Madonna.

Topics: Mother, Differences, Fame, Teresa

There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. ... Time, self-pity, apathy, bitterness, and exhaustion can take the Christmas out of the child, but you cannot take the child out of Christmas.

source: - Erma Bombeck (2011). “I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression”, p.119, Fawcett

Topics: Christmas, Morning, Children, Christmas Morning

I will never understand children. I never pretended to. I meet mothers all the time who make resolutions to themselves. 'I'm going to ... go out of my way to show them I am interested in them and what they do. I am going to understand my children.' These women end up making rag rugs, using blunt scissors.

source: - Erma Bombeck (1996). “Four of a Kind: A Suburban Field Guide”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

Topics: Mother, Children, Rags