Top 100 Bombeck's Quotes
#1. Bombeck's Rug Rule: an ugly carpet will last for ever.
Erma Bombeck
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. A kitchen without an ironing board? Are you kidding? It's un-American. It's like Simon without Garfunkel.
Erma Bombeck
#6. When a man's got cream in the refrigerator at home, he won't go out looking for two-percent butterfat.
Erma Bombeck
#7. 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
#8. Grandparenthood is one of life's rewards for surviving your own children.
Erma Bombeck
#9. Pregnancy is the only time in a woman's life she can help God work a miracle.
Erma Bombeck
#10. ('I'm going to be more assertive, if that's all right with you', as Erma Bombeck says), and
Stephen King
#11. Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.
Erma Bombeck
#12. When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
Erma Bombeck
#13. Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.
Erma Bombeck
#14. Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip
Erma Bombeck
#15. Mother's words of wisdom: Answer me! Don't talk with food in your mouth!
Erma Bombeck
#16. 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
#17. If I raised my hand to wipe the hair out of my children's eyes, they'd flinch and call their attorney.
Erma Bombeck
#18. It's simply wrong to always order [kids] to stop that fighting. There are times when one child is simply defending his rights and damned well should be fighting.
Erma Bombeck
#19. Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, its unplanned, it's full of suprises.
Erma Bombeck
#20. 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
#21. Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.
Erma Bombeck
#22. Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.
Erma Bombeck
#23. A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend - and he's a priest.
Erma Bombeck
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a mother must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.
Erma Bombeck
#28. My type of humor is almost pure identification. A housewife reads my column and says, 'But that's happened to ME! I know just what she's talking about!
Erma Bombeck
#29. Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it's still snowing.
Erma Bombeck
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. There is only one thing harder in this world than forgiving. It's to ask forgiveness armed only with, 'I'm sorry'.
Erma Bombeck
#33. 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
#34. Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
Erma Bombeck
#35. What makes people laugh? ... It's a happy marriage between a person who needs to laugh and someone who's got one to give.
Erma Bombeck
#36. The more I think about it, the more there is to be said for the sloth. He sleeps fifteen to eighteen hours a day and is known to have taken forty-eight days to travel four miles. He hangs in the trees after he's dead. But he lives longer than the cheetah.
Erma Bombeck
#37. Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.
Erma Bombeck
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.
Erma Bombeck
#41. What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?
Erma Bombeck
#42. 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
#43. When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.
Erma Bombeck
#44. It's frightening to wake up one morning and discover that while you were asleep you went out of style.
Erma Bombeck
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.
Erma Bombeck
#48. 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
#49. Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people's children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.
Erma Bombeck
#50. It's [motherhood] the biggest on-the-job- training program in existence today.
Erma Bombeck
#51. There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
Erma Bombeck
#52. 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
#53. There would have been more 'I love you's' and more, 'I'm sorry's'.
Erma Bombeck
#54. One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone.
Erma Bombeck
#55. 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
#56. Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.
Erma Bombeck
#57. 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
#58. In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television.
Erma Bombeck
#59. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.
Erma Bombeck
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.
Erma Bombeck
#63. Authorities say brain cells may shrink, but they don't necessarily die. Frankly, I am cheered by the fact that something is shrinking. I'd be even more thrilled if what was shrinking affected my dress size, but you can't have everything.
Erma Bombeck
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. For some of us, watching a miniseries that lasts longer than most marriages is not easy.
Erma Bombeck
#70. 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
#71. Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.
Erma Bombeck
#72. 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
#73. House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.
Erma Bombeck
#75. A child develops individuality long before he develops taste.
Erma Bombeck
#76. Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
Erma Bombeck
#77. To be honest, however, I will have to admit that I wrote this book for the original model - the one who was overkidsed, underpatienced, with four years of college and chapped hands all year around. I knew if I didn't follow Faith's advice and laugh a little at myself, then I would surely cry.
Erma Bombeck
#78. A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat.
Erma Bombeck
#79. Most children's first words are 'Mama' or 'Daddy.' Mine were, 'Do I have to use my own money?'
Erma Bombeck
#80. I became hysterical and frightened and begged for sedation. And that was just the first prenatal visit.
Erma Bombeck
#81. Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.
Erma Bombeck
#82. 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
#83. Encourage independence in your children by regularly losing them in the supermarket.
Erma Bombeck
#84. Why take pride in cooking, when they don't take pride in eating?
Erma Bombeck
#85. Many people are intimidated by doctors ... People also feel stupid when they don't understand what a doctor's talking about the first time around, so they don't ask again. And let's be honest here, people. English is not a doctor's first language.
Erma Bombeck
#86. For years, my husband and I have advocated separate vacations. But the kids keep finding us.
Erma Bombeck
#87. [On her father's death:] I didn't know his leaving would hurt so much.
Erma Bombeck
#88. What does it profit a 78-year-old woman to sit around the pool in a bikini if she cannot feed herself?
Erma Bombeck
#89. Time. It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by the for young, and runs out for the aged.
Erma Bombeck
#91. I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.
Erma Bombeck
#92. 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
#93. I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless. They crash ... you add a longer tail ... you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they'll fly.
Erma Bombeck
#94. Grandmas can shed the yoke of responsibility, relax and enjoy their grandchildren in a way that was not possible when they were raising their own children. And they can glow in the realisation that here is their seed of life that will harvest generations to come.
Erma Bombeck
#95. A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween.
Erma Bombeck
#96. You show me a boy who brings a snake home to his mother and I'll show you an orphan.
Erma Bombeck
#97. 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
#98. Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what.
Erma Bombeck
#99. 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
#100. Babies on television never spit up on the Ultrasuede.
Erma Bombeck
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