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Erma Bombeck Quotes

Erma Louise Bombeck was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper humor column describing suburban home life, syndicated from 1965 to 1996. She also published 15 books, most of which became bestsellers.

Between 1965 and April 17, 1996 – five days before her death – Bombeck wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns, using broad and sometimes eloquent humor, chronicling the ordinary life of a Midwestern suburban housewife. By the 1970s, her columns were read semi-weekly by 30 million readers of the 900 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Her work stands as a humorous chronicle of middle-class life in America after World War II, among the generation of parents who produced the Baby Boomers. Wikipedia  

✵ 21. February 1927 – 22. April 1996  •  Other names ארמה בומבק, ارما بومبک
Erma Bombeck: 64 quotes24 likes

Famous Erma Bombeck Quotes

“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

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

Erma Bombeck

“A child needs your love most when he deserves it least”

Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck Quotes about women

“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

“I've exercised with women so thin, buzzards followed them to their cars.”

Erma Bombeck

Source: Forever, Erma

“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

Erma Bombeck: Trending quotes

“When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.”

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

A Marriage Made In Heaven; or, Too Tired For an Affair (1993)

“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

As quoted in 50 Ways to Stand Up for America : Put the Spirit of July 4th Into Everyday Life (2002) by W. B. Freeman

Erma Bombeck Quotes

“When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.”

Erma Bombeck

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”

Erma Bombeck

“Housework can kill you if done right.”

Erma Bombeck

“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.”

Erma Bombeck

“All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.”

Erma Bombeck

“No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.”

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

“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”

Erma Bombeck

“When humor goes, there goes civilization.”

Erma Bombeck

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

Erma Bombeck

“If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.”

Erma Bombeck

As quoted in TIME (1984), also in Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much (1993) by Jonathon Lazear and Wendy Lazear, p. 22

“Written on her tombstone: "I told you I was sick.”

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

“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

“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

“Laugh now, cry later.”

Erma Bombeck

Source: The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank

“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

“I come from a home where gravy is a beverage.”

Erma Bombeck

“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

“Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.”

Erma Bombeck

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

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

“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

“It was a bitter moment for us. We weren't two mature parents. We were just two kids playing grown-up. We still needed Mommy and Daddy's permission, blessings, and money to survive.”

Erma Bombeck

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

Erma Bombeck

Source: When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home

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

Erma Bombeck

Book title (1978)
Source: When God Created Mothers

“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

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

Erma Bombeck

“Housework, if it is done properly, can cause brain damage.”

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

Source: Family - The Ties that Bind...And Gag!

“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

Source: Family - The Ties that Bind...And Gag!

“The grass is always greener over the septic tank.”

Erma Bombeck

Title of book (1976)

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