Top 335 Quotes & Sayings by Erma Bombeck - Page 3

When humor go's, there go's civilization.

Most mothers entering the labor market outside the home are naive. They stagger home each evening, holding mail in their teeth, the cleaning over their arm, a lamb chop defrosting under each armpit, balancing two gallons of frozen milk between their knees, and expect one of the kids to get the door.

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

Kids are without a doubt the most suspicious diners in the world. They will eat mud (raw or baked) rocks, paste, crayons, ball-point pens, moving goldfish, cigarette butts, and cat food. Try to coax a little beef stew into their mouths and they look at you like a puppy when you stand over him with the Sunday paper rolled up.

Pregnancy is the only time in a woman's life she can help God work a miracle.

It is ludicrous to read the microwave direction on the boxes of food you buy, as each one will have a disclaimer: THIS WILL VARY WITH YOUR MICROWAVE. Loosely translated, this means, You're on your own, Bernice.

Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, its unplanned, it's full of suprises.

The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

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.

The family. We are 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. . . and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.

I learned the importance of a man's chair early in life. I learned that he may love several wives, embrace several cars, be true to more than one political philosophy, and be equally committed to several careers, but he will have only one comfortable chair in his life. I learned it will be an ugly chair. It will match nothing in the entire house. It will never wear out.

Housework can kill you if done right.

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

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?

It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line.

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

I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so.

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.

Let me put it this way. According to my girth, I should be a ninety-foot redwood.

One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip.

When you're lecturing teenagers and they begin to hum and leave the room, you can sense there is hostility.

If I had my life to live over I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food

With boys, you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane.

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

Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood.

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

There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. ... Time, self-pity, apathy, bitterness, and exhaustion can take the Christmas out of the child, but you cannot take the child out of Christmas.

I am always behind the shopper at the grocery store who has stitched her coupons in the lining of her coat and wants to talk about a 'strong' chicken she bought two weeks ago. The register tape also runs out just before her sub-total. In the public restroom, I always stand behind the teen-ager who is changing into her band uniform for a parade and doesn't emerge until she has combed the tassels on her boots, shaved her legs, and recovered her contact lens from the commode.

Know the difference between success and fame. Success is Mother Teresa. Fame is Madonna.

My idea of 'roughing it' is when you have to have an extension for your electric blanket.

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.

When you leave them in the morning, they stick their nose in the door crack and stand there like a portrait until you turn the key eight hours later.

When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.

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

A child needs your love most when he deserves it least

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

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.

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

I just clipped 2 articles from a current magazine. One is a diet guaranteed to drop 5 pounds off my body in a weekend. The other is a recipe for a 6 minute pecan pie.

Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience.

Kids have little computer bodies with disks that store information. They remember who had to do the dishes the last time you had spaghetti, who lost the knob off the TV set six years ago, who got punished for teasing the dog when he wasn't teasing the dog and who had to wear girls boots the last time it snowed.

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.

Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what.

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.

Never loan your car to anyone to whom you've given birth.

You show me a boy who brings a snake home to his mother and I'll show you an orphan.

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.

Adults are always telling young people, 'These are the best years of your life.' Are they? I don't know. Sometimes when adults say this to children I look into their faces. They look like someone on the top seat of the Ferris wheel who has had too much cotton candy and barbecue. They'd like to get off and be sick but everyone keeps telling them what a good time they're having.

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

I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

I don't think women outlive men, Doctor. It only seems longer.

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.

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

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?

What makes people laugh? . . . It's a happy marriage between a person who needs to laugh and someone who's got one to give.

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.

A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn't charge more after midnight - or anything before midnight.

Every puppy should have a boy.

Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" Wasn't there any change?