Top 335 Quotes & Sayings by Erma Bombeck - Page 5

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

Babies on television never spit up on the Ultrasuede.

not all bears have their own television series. Some of them are unemployed wild animals.

Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain.

If the nest is truly empty, who owns all this junk?

Bombeck's Rug Rule: an ugly carpet will last for ever.

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.'

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.

It is upsetting to many parents that their teen-agers introduce them to their friends as encyclopedia salesmen who are just passing through ... if they introduce them at all. I have some acquaintances who hover in dark parking lots, enter church separately and crouch in furnace rooms so their teen-agers will not be accused of having parents.

I'm going to stop punishing my children by saying, “Never mind! I'll do it myself.

I lost everything in the post-natal depression.

The woman who says, 'My kids are all speaking to one another and they love us' is a psychopathic liar.

Some of the best fiction writers got their start writing airline menus.

I have never understood, for example, how come a child can climb up on the roof, scale the TV antenna, and rescue the cat ... yet cannot walk down the hallway without grabbing both walls with his grubby hands for balance.

She's as funny as a toothache

My sister and I never engaged in sibling rivalry. Our parents weren't that crazy about either one of us.

Early in my life I had made a pact with myself. I would never eat anything that moved when I cooked it, excited the dog, or inflated upon impact with my teeth.

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.

If anyone knew where they were, I'd send the ISDBB (Incredibly Stupid and Dumb Beyond Belief) award to the two guys who tried to break in to the Ohio penitentiary.

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.

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.

Crocodiles have a smile I've seen on the face of every lawyer I've ever met.

My mind works . . . two boobs never get me a job.

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.

Cats invented self-esteem; there is not an insecure bone in their body.

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.

I'm on a diet as my skin doesn't fit me anymore.

Occasionally, once a speaker is on his feet, it is difficult to get him to sit down. ... If and when he returns to earth, he notices half of the room is paging the other half and a few are playing with the melted candles.

Some say the antique syndrome surfaced to offset the newness of the land, the homes, and the settlers. Some say the interest was initiated by a desire to return to the roots of yesterday. I contend the entire movement to acquire antiques was born out of sheer respect of things that lasted longer than fifteen minutes.

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.

Parenting is a negative thing. Keep your children from killing themselves, or anyone else, and hope for the best.

When you're an orthodox worrier, some days are worse than others.

No One Diets on Thanksgiving.

Poached eggs are good, poached animals are not.

It's [motherhood] the biggest on-the-job- training program in existence today.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Laugh now, cry later.

Most children's first words are 'Mama' or 'Daddy.' Mine were, 'Do I have to use my own money?'

Men who have a thirty-six-tele vised-football- games-a- week-habit should be declared legally dead and their estates probated.

A small waist makes you tire easily.

I have always felt that too much time was given before the birth, which is spent learning things like how to breathe in and out with your husband (I had my baby when they gave you a shot in the hip and you didn't wake up until the kid was ready to start school), and not enough time given to how to mother after the baby is born.

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

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!

To my way of thinking, the American family started to decline when parents began to communicate with their children.

Sex in the nineties is boring. The problem is that it has gone from an active act to a spectator sport. We watch people make love on television and in films. We call 900 numbers to hear what someone would do to us if they weren't sitting in a boiler room of other dirty talkers reading from a prepared script.

There would have been more 'I love you's' and more, 'I'm sorry's'.

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

A kitchen without an ironing board? Are you kidding? It's un-American. It's like Simon without Garfunkel.

[On her father's death:] I didn't know his leaving would hurt so much.

A grandparent will accept your calls from anywhere, collect.

I will never understand children. I never pretended to. I meet mothers all the time who make resolutions to themselves. 'I'm going to ... go out of my way to show them I am interested in them and what they do. I am going to understand my children.' These women end up making rag rugs, using blunt scissors.

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.

Phrases and their actual meanings: My teacher has never liked me. Expect a phone call before lunch from the teacher informing you that your child has been launching hot dogs by compressing them inside a small Thermos and then removing the lid quickly.

I originate from a family where sauce is viewed as a refreshment.

We even switched to a newly-formed church across the town that gave one hundred and twenty trading stamps each time we attended. (We now worship a brown and white chicken with a sunburst on its chest.)

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.

Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted.