Top 250 Erma Bombeck Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “If I raised my hand to wipe the hair out of my children’s eyes, they’d flinch and call their attorney.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

53. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

56. “Grandma told me Mama was once caught by the Principal for writing in the front of her book, “In Case of Fire, Throw This in First.” I have never had so much respect for Mama as the day I heard this.”

— Erma Bombeck

57. “I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.”

— Erma Bombeck

58. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

60. “She’s as funny as a toothache.”

— Erma Bombeck

61. “I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.”

— Erma Bombeck

62. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

64. “Housework can kill you if done right.”

— Erma Bombeck

65. “When it comes to cooking, five years ago I felt guilty “just adding water.” Now I want to bang the tube against the countertop and have a five-course meal pop out. If it comes with plastic silverware and a plate that self-destructs, all the better.”

— Erma Bombeck

66. “Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.”

— Erma Bombeck

67. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

70. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

71. “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?”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

73. “When you’re an orthodox worrier, some days are worse than others.”

— Erma Bombeck

74. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

75. “A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.”

— Erma Bombeck

76. “I never go to a college reunion that I don’t come away feeling sorry for all those paunchy, balding jocks trying to hang onto youth. I feel sorry for the men, too.”

— Erma Bombeck

77. “When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

79. “Mother’s words of wisdom: Answer me! Don’t talk with food in your mouth!”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

81. “My mother won’t admit it, but I’ve always been a disappointment to her. Deep down inside, she’ll never forgive herself for giving birth to a daughter who refuses to launder aluminium foil and use it over again.”

— Erma Bombeck

82. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

83. “Every puppy should have a boy.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

86. “The family. We were 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, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.”

— Erma Bombeck

87. “Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It’s like stealing a two-year-old.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

89. “In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

92. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

93. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

94. “Grandparenthood is one of life’s rewards for surviving your own children.”

— Erma Bombeck

95. “Before we sent kids to computer camps and told them they were having a good time, there was imagination among the human species.”

— Erma Bombeck

96. “Most children’s first words are ‘Mama’ or ‘Daddy.’ Mine were, ‘Do I have to use my own money?’”

— Erma Bombeck

97. “Poached eggs are good, poached animals are not.”

— Erma Bombeck

98. “Let us hope manufacturers can come up with a diaper that is environmentally sound. To go back to cloth would send us back to the day when breathing and raising a baby at the same time were incompatible.”

— Erma Bombeck

99. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck