Top 250 Erma Bombeck Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Erma Bombeck

Featured in: Courage Quotes, Feel Good Quotes, Quotes About Dreams, Kindness Quotes, Tuesday Motivational Quotes

2. “Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.”

— Erma Bombeck

3. “Kids need love the most when they’re acting most unlovable.”

— Erma Bombeck

Featured in: Quotes About Acting

4. “Pregnancy is the only time in a woman’s life she can help God work a miracle.”

— Erma Bombeck

5. “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.”

— Erma Bombeck

6. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

Featured in: Caring Quotes, 4th Of July Quotes

7. “A child needs your love most when he deserves it least.”

— Erma Bombeck

8. “There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”

— Erma Bombeck

Featured in: Spirituality Quotes, Quotes About Children, Christmas Quotes

9. “If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

11. “I am not a glutton – I am an explorer of food.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

13. “When you look like your passport photo, it’s time to go home.”

— Erma Bombeck

14. “Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”

— Erma Bombeck

15. “The grass is always greener over the septic tank.”

— Erma Bombeck

16. “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...”

— Erma Bombeck

Featured in: Real Quotes

17. “Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn’t even in the same neighborhood.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

21. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

22. “Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.”

— Erma Bombeck

23. “Never accept a drink from a urologist.”

— Erma Bombeck

24. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

25. “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” Erma Bombeck as quoted in A Christmas Blessing.”

— Erma Bombeck

26. “Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it’s still snowing.”

— Erma Bombeck

27. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

Featured in: Hilarious Quotes

28. “Children make your life important.”

— Erma Bombeck

29. “Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

31. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

32. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

33. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

34. “If the nest is truly empty, who owns all this junk?”

— Erma Bombeck

35. “When humor go’s, there go’s civilization.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

37. “I used everything you gave me.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

40. “No One Diets on Thanksgiving.”

— Erma Bombeck

41. “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?”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

45. “Laugh now, cry later.”

— Erma Bombeck

46. “The term ‘working mother’ is redundant.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

48. “When children reach the age of sixteen, they discover the meaning of life: car keys.”

— Erma Bombeck

49. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck