110+ Erma Bombeck Quotes On Death, Marriage And Family

Erma Bombeck was an American humorist who wrote extensively about the ordinary life of a mid-20th century American housewife. She was known for her self-deprecating wit and often wrote about the challenges of being a wife and mother. She wrote 15 books and was syndicated in 900 newspapers, becoming one of the most widely read humorists in the world. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Erma Bombeck on death, marriage, family.

Top 10 Erma Bombeck Quotes

1. Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
2. In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
3. It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
4. 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'.
5. When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.
6. Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.
7. I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
8. Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
9. No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.
10. 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 Image Quotes

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage. — Erma Bombeck

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. — Erma Bombeck

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. — Erma Bombeck

Cats invented self-esteem. — Erma Bombeck

If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it. — Erma Bombeck

Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other. — Erma Bombeck

I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food — Erma Bombeck

Never have more children than you have car windows. — Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck Short Quotes

• If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
• Cats invented self-esteem.
• Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.
• If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.
• The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
• I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill.
• Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
• Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
• There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
• He who laughs.....lasts.

Erma Bombeck Quotes About Death

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

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

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

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

If compliments were food, I'd have starved to death 28 years ago. — Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck Quotes About Marriage

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

People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it is no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

For some of us, watching a miniseries that lasts longer than most marriages is not easy. — Erma Bombeck

It would have been a wonderful wedding - had it not been mine. — Erma Bombeck

Never be in a hurry to terminate a marriage. Remember, you may need this man/woman to finish a sentence. — Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck Quotes About Family

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. — 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

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

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

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

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. — Erma Bombeck

Family life got better and we got our car back - as soon as we put 'I love Mom' on the license plate. — Erma Bombeck

I've never vied for power in the family before. Pointing a box at the garage door and saying "Open!" was never a big deal, but holding that television tuner and realizing I alone control what is flashed on the screen brings out the Iacocca in me. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

Erma Bombeck Quotes About Love

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

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

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

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

I've decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it. — Erma Bombeck

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

A child needs your love most when he deserves it least — Erma Bombeck

I firmly believe kids don't want your understanding. They want your trust, your compassion, your blinding love and your car keys, but you try to understand them and you're in big trouble. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

Erma Bombeck Quotes About Aging

Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub. — 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

As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am. — Erma Bombeck

The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, "Could I get you your check?" and we answered, "How about the menu first?" — 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

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. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

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

I've always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby. — Erma Bombeck

A grandparent will accept your calls from anywhere, collect. — Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck Quotes About Life

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

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

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

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

When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies. — Erma Bombeck

Children make your life important. — Erma Bombeck

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

. . . 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. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

Erma Bombeck Quotes About Children

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

Never have more children than you have car windows. — Erma Bombeck

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

Myths that need clarification: "No matter how many times you see the Grand canyon, you are still emotionally moved to tears." False. It depends on how many children the out-of-towners brought with them who kicked the back of your seat from Phoenix to Flagstaff and got their gum caught in your hair. — Erma Bombeck

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

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth. — 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 is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. — Erma Bombeck

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

Erma Bombeck Quotes About Housework

My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint. — Erma Bombeck

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance. — Erma Bombeck

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

Housework can kill you if done right. — Erma Bombeck

The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I've ever seen that I didn't have to clean. — Erma Bombeck

Housework, if you do it right, will kill you. — Erma Bombeck

My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch on fire or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one cares. Why should you? — Erma Bombeck

Housework, if it is done properly, can cause brain damage. — Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck Quotes About House

House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

No baby shall at any time be quartered in a house where there are no soft laps, no laughter, or no love. — Erma Bombeck

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, "A house guest," you're wrong because I have just described my kids. — Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck Quotes About Food

I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food — Erma Bombeck

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. — 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

Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer. — Erma Bombeck

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

Never order food in excess of your body weight. — Erma Bombeck

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

I convinced him his luggage had gone to that big Bermuda Triangle in the sky. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

Mother's words of wisdom: Answer me! Don't talk with food in your mouth! — Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck Famous Quotes And Sayings

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage. — Erma Bombeck

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. — Erma Bombeck

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. — Erma Bombeck

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding. — Erma Bombeck

If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it. — Erma Bombeck

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

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? — Erma Bombeck

Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other. — Erma Bombeck

I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food — Erma Bombeck

Never have more children than you have car windows. — Erma Bombeck

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

It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners. — 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

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

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go. — Erma Bombeck

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother. — 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

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

I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent. — Erma Bombeck

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time. — Erma Bombeck

A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

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

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

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. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

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

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

The grass is always greener over the septic tank. — Erma Bombeck

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

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. — Erma Bombeck

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

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. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, No, thank you, to dessert that night. And for what! — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

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

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows. — Erma Bombeck

A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat. A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday. A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend -- and he's a priest. — Erma Bombeck

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

When humor goes, there goes civilization. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

Babies should enjoy the freedom to vocalize whether it be in church, a public meeting place, during a movie, or after hours when the lights are out. They have not yet learned that joy and laughter have to last a lifetime and must be conserved. — Erma Bombeck

There was a time when the respect and trust my children had for me would have made you sick to your stomach. They believed I could blow on a red traffic light and turn it green. — Erma Bombeck

There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

I lost everything in the post-natal depression. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

My mother won't admit it, but I've always been a disappointment to her. Deep down inside, she'll never forgive herself for giving birth to a daughter who refuses to launder aluminium foil and use it over again. — Erma Bombeck

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

All of a sudden, I feel very old and very tired. Maybe when I get to California, the smog, brush fires, floods, and earthquakes will cheer me up. — Erma Bombeck

Life Lessons by Erma Bombeck

1. Erma Bombeck taught us to embrace life's imperfections and to appreciate the small moments of joy and beauty. She also encouraged us to take time to laugh and to find humor in the everyday.
2. She showed us that it is possible to find the extraordinary in the ordinary and to make the most of our lives.
3. Finally, Erma Bombeck taught us to be kind to ourselves and to others, to be resilient in the face of adversity, and to always strive for joy.