Erma Bombeck Quotes

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.

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.

When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

Children make your life important.

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.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip.

Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

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.

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.

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.

the ultimate in longevity is the Christmas fruitcake. It is a cake made during the holidays with fruits that make it heavier than the stove it is cooked in.

Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it's still snowing.

The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

Success is outliving your failures

Kids need love the most when they're acting most unlovable.

Housework can kill you if done right.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?

How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?

It is my theory you can't get rid of fat. All you can do is move it around, like furniture.

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

A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat.

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?

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

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

. . . but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute - look at it and really see it - live it - and never give it back.

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.

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.

A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend - and he's a priest.

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

On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.

I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.

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.

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

Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.

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

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.

I worry about scientists discovering that lettuce has been fattening all along.

A child needs your love most when he deserves it least

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.

Every puppy should have a boy.