Top 250 Erma Bombeck Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “I’m on a diet as my skin doesn’t fit me anymore.”

— Erma Bombeck

202. “Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You’re not out of it until the computer says you’re out of it.”

— Erma Bombeck

203. “Bombeck’s Rug Rule: an ugly carpet will last for ever.”

— Erma Bombeck

204. “A child develops individuality long before he develops taste.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

206. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

207. “We wondered why when a child laughed, he belonged to Daddy, and when he had a sagging diaper that smelled like a landfill, ‘He wants his mother.’”

— Erma Bombeck

208. “Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

210. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

211. “What does it profit a 78-year-old woman to sit around the pool in a bikini if she cannot feed herself?”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

213. “Throughout the years I have set up my own rules about eating food: Never eat anything you can’t pronounce. Beware of food that is described as, “Some Americans say it tastes like chicken.”

— Erma Bombeck

214. “There are few things in this world more satisfying than having your son teach you how to play tennis, unless it is having a semi-truck run over your foot.”

— Erma Bombeck

215. “A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.”

— Erma Bombeck

216. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

217. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

218. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

220. “It would have been a wonderful wedding – had it not been mine.”

— Erma Bombeck

221. “I’ve always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby...”

— Erma Bombeck

222. “I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

224. “I’ve always been intrigued with the variety of answers this generation will give their children who ask, “Where did I come from, Mommy?” They will range from “Number 176 vial in Buffalo, New York,” to “You were defrosted.””

— Erma Bombeck

225. “It is difficult to single out one sport over another, but if I have to name one in my separation suit, it will undoubtedly be football.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

227. “A kitchen without an ironing board? Are you kidding? It’s un-American. It’s like Simon without Garfunkel.”

— Erma Bombeck

228. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

229. “Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.”

— Erma Bombeck

230. “I convinced him his luggage had gone to that big Bermuda Triangle in the sky.”

— Erma Bombeck

231. “Babies on television never spit up on the Ultrasuede.”

— Erma Bombeck

232. “If compliments were food, I’d have starved to death 28 years ago.”

— Erma Bombeck

233. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

234. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

235. “I don’t think women outlive men, Doctor. It only seems longer.”

— Erma Bombeck

236. “There are basic differences between food and clothing. You eat food and wear clothing. Food goes in; clothing goes on. 2. Do not bite anything that will bite back. This includes the dog, other babies, electrical cords and your father when he is watching professional football on television. 3. Washing your face after a meal is not considered cruel and unusual punishment. It won’t do any good to report Mommy and Daddy to the police. 4.”

— Erma Bombeck

237. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

238. “I have always felt cookbooks were fiction and the most beautiful words in the English language were ’room service.”

— Erma Bombeck

239. “Family life got better and we got our car back – as soon as we put ‘I love Mom’ on the license plate.”

— Erma Bombeck

240. “I was leafing through a magazine where there was a before-and-after picture of a woman who went from a size 5 to a size 3 by liposuction. Was she serious? I’ve cooked bigger turkeys than her “before” picture.”

— Erma Bombeck

241. “Maybe you know why a child can reject a hot dog with mustard served on a soft bun at home, yet eat six of them two hours later at fifty cents each.”

— Erma Bombeck

242. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

243. “I’ve never vied for power in the family before. Pointing a box at the garage door and saying “Open!” was never a big deal, but holding that television tuner and realizing I alone control what is flashed on the screen brings out the Iacocca in me.”

— Erma Bombeck

244. “It is fast approaching the point where I don’t want tAdenauer to want the job.”

— Erma Bombeck

245. “One son appears in stereo – a transistor in one ear and the phone in the other...”

— Erma Bombeck

246. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

247. “Myths that need clarification: “Everyone in California lives on a white, sandy beach.” False. The only people who live on California beaches are vacationers from Arizona, Utah, and Nevada who own condos.”

— Erma Bombeck

248. “Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer.”

— Erma Bombeck

249. “I have paid as much as $300 a night to throw up into a sink shaped like a seashell.”

— Erma Bombeck

250. “Sometimes I can’t figure designers out. It’s as if they flunked human anatomy.”

— Erma Bombeck