Top 250 Erma Bombeck Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

153. “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

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

— Erma Bombeck

155. “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

156. “I lost everything in the post-natal depression.”

— Erma Bombeck

157. “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

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

— Erma Bombeck

159. “Do I have to use my own money?”

— Erma Bombeck

160. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

161. “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?”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

163. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

164. “Cats invented self-esteem.”

— Erma Bombeck

165. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

166. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

167. “Why take pride in cooking, when they don’t take pride in eating?”

— Erma Bombeck

168. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

169. “I’m so bored. I went to the food locker yesterday to visit my meat.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

172. “I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: ‘Checkout Time is 18 years.’”

— Erma Bombeck

173. “When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”

— Erma Bombeck

174. “Our teen-agers withdrew to their bedrooms on their thirteenth birthday and didn’t show themselves to us again until it was time to get married.”

— Erma Bombeck

175. “Success is outliving your failures.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

177. “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?”

— Erma Bombeck

178. “The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I’ve ever seen that I didn’t have to clean.”

— Erma Bombeck

179. “With all the precautions and risks that accompany sex today, it sounds about as much fun as walking through a minefield.”

— Erma Bombeck

180. “Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.”

— Erma Bombeck

181. “God created man, but I could do better.”

— Erma Bombeck

182. “Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.”

— Erma Bombeck

183. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

184. “The mole rat is the only rodent born without a fur coat. With a good lawyer, someone would pay for that little oversight.”

— Erma Bombeck

185. “A friend doesn’t go on a diet because you are fat.”

— Erma Bombeck

186. “I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.”

— Erma Bombeck

187. “For some unexplained reason, it’s always the other end of the table that’s wild and raucous, with screaming laughter and a fella who plays ‘Holiday for Strings’ on water glasses.”

— Erma Bombeck

188. “Phone are wonderful instruments, but I wouldn’t want our daughter to marry one.”

— Erma Bombeck

189. “Remember, you can lead a fifty-seven-year-old body to motherhood, but you can’t make it stay awake.”

— Erma Bombeck

190. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

191. “I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

193. “My son did not show signs of a money deficiency until he opened his small fist in the nursery and found it was empty.”

— Erma Bombeck

194. “Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It’s literary suicide.”

— Erma Bombeck

195. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

196. “Never have more children than you have car windows.”

— Erma Bombeck

197. “My idea of ‘roughing it’ is when you have to have an extension for your electric blanket.”

— Erma Bombeck

198. “I think it’s time we women stopped carrying supplies for the entire family. If children don’t have room to carry their own toys, if men don’t have pockets in their pants, tougho.”

— Erma Bombeck

199. “Limousines used to be reserved for the ruling class, or, on special occasions, for the working class. Today, limousines are like taxicabs with the door handles still intact.”

— Erma Bombeck

200. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck