Top 250 Erma Bombeck Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

102. “I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you to be.”

— Erma Bombeck

103. “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!’”

— Erma Bombeck

104. “The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are 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?””

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

106. “You become about as exciting as your food blender. The kids come in, look you in the eye, and ask if anybody’s home.”

— Erma Bombeck

107. “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

108. “One meal a day is enough for a lion and would be for all of us if all we did all day was swat flies.”

— Erma Bombeck

109. “Having a delivery covered by Medicare just isn’t going to fly. It’s too risky for a woman to put a baby down and not remember where she left it.”

— Erma Bombeck

110. “How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?”

— Erma Bombeck

111. “I have just come up with a wonderful solution to end all wars. Let me give directions on how to get there.”

— Erma Bombeck

112. “No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

114. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

115. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

116. “I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

119. “After age twelve, birthdays should be as private as hernia surgery.”

— Erma Bombeck

120. “Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.”

— Erma Bombeck

121. “Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.”

— Erma Bombeck

122. “You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.”

— Erma Bombeck

123. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

124. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

125. “Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.”

— Erma Bombeck

126. “Laugh now, cry later.”

— Erma Bombeck

127. “People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it is no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

129. “I got so much food spit back in my face when my kids were small, I put windshield wipers on my glasses.”

— Erma Bombeck

130. “Never order food in excess of your body weight.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

133. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

134. “House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.”

— Erma Bombeck

135. “A friend doesn’t go on a diet because you are fat. A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday. A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend – and he’s a priest.”

— Erma Bombeck

136. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

138. “A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn’t charge more after midnight – or anything before midnight.”

— Erma Bombeck

139. “Crocodiles have a smile I’ve seen on the face of every lawyer I’ve ever met.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

141. “A small waist makes you tire easily.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

143. “Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.”

— Erma Bombeck

144. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

145. “In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

147. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

148. “Do I have to use my own money?”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

150. “I don’t know when pepper mills in a restaurant got to be right behind frankincense and myrrh in prominence. It used to be in a little jar that sat next to the salt on the table and everyone passed it around, sneezed, and it was no big deal.”

— Erma Bombeck