Erma Louise Bombeck was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her syndicated newspaper humor column describing suburban home life from 1965 to 1996. She also published 15 books, most of which became bestsellers. These Erma Bombeck quotes will motivate you.
Best Erma Bombeck Quotes
- “You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “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
- “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Given another shot at life, I would seize every minute…look at it and really see it… live it…and never give it back. Stop sweating the small stuff. Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what. Instead, let’s cherish the relationships we have with those who do love us.” ~ Erma Bombeck
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“Housework, if it is done properly, can cause brain damage.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a mother, I’ll tell them: I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom, and what time you would get home. … I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a creep. I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to a drugstore and confess, ‘I stole this.’ … But most of all I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it. That was the hardest part of all.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it’s still snowing.” ~ Erma Bombeck
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“Success is outliving your failures” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super-sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “He who laughs…..lasts.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they’re not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They’re upset because they’ve gone from supervisor of a child’s life to a spectator. It’s like being the vice president of the United States.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “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
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“Cats invented self-esteem.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “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
- “I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “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
- “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
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“When humor go’s, there go’s civilization.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Grandparenthood is one of life’s rewards for surviving your own children.” ~ Erma Bombeck
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“When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “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
- “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
- “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 Quotes
- “I remember thinking how often we look, but never see … we listen, but never hear … we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.” ~ Erma Bombeck
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“Housework can kill you if done right.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “He opened the jar of pickles when no one else could. He was the only one in the house who wasn’t afraid to go into the basement by himself. He cut himself shaving, but no one kissed it or got excited about it. It was understood when it rained, he got the car and brought it around to the door. When anyone was sick, he went out to get the prescription filled. He took lots of pictures… but he was never in them.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “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
- “Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know-how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.” ~ Erma Bombeck
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“How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn’t even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.” ~ Erma Bombeck
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“Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course, I’ve got dreams.’ Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look in it, and yep, they’re still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, ‘How good or how bad am I?’ That’s where courage comes in.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.” ~ Erma Bombeck Quotes
- “It’s the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have…One pair that see through closed doors. Another in the back of her head…and, of course, the ones in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect ‘I understand and I love you’ without so much as uttering a word.” ~ Erma Bombeck
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“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “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.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “It is my theory you can’t get rid of fat. All you can do is move it around, like furniture.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “If I had my life to live over again, I would have waxed less and listened more. … I would have cried and laughed less while watching television … and more while watching real life. … But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute of it … look at it and really see it … try it on … live it … exhaust it … and never give the minute back until there was nothing left of it.” ~ Erma Bombeck
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“The grass is always greener over the septic tank.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It’s unbridled, its unplanned, it’s full of suprises.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.” ~ Erma Bombeck”
- All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Children make your life important.” ~ Erma Bombeck
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“Never have more children than you have car windows.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “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
- “Time. It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by the for young, and runs out for the aged.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “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
- “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
- “Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted. Every evening they disappear. Most parents never imagine how hard they try to please us, and how miserable they feel when they think they have failed.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.” ~ Erma Bombeck
- “I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.” ~ Erma Bombeck
