Erma Louise Bombeck was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper column that described suburban home life from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s. Profoundly inspirational Erma Bombeck quotes will fire up your brain and encourage you to look at life differently while making you laugh.

If you’re searching for famous quotes by comedians that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes from Jack Handey, powerful Terry Pratchett quotes and famous Amy Poehler quotes.

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

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

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else. Erma Bombeck

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart. Erma Bombeck

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead. 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

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out. 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

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 your mother asks, Do you want a piece of advice? it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway. Erma Bombeck

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

Encourage independence in your children by regularly losing them in the supermarket. Erma Bombeck

Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments. 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

The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again. Erma Bombeck

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. 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

If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it. 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

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

I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it. Erma Bombeck

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. 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

I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair. 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 awhile 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

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

It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners. Erma Bombeck

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It’s literary suicide. Erma Bombeck

Grandparenthood is one of life’s rewards for surviving your own children. Erma Bombeck

In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet. 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

Never order food in excess of your body weight. 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

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it. Erma Bombeck

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

Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It’s like stealing a two year old. 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 have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up. Erma Bombeck

Success is outliving your failures. 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

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage. 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

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. 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

If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it. 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

Thanks giving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence. Erma Bombeck

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else. Erma Bombeck

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

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

When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies. 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

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

Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone? Erma Bombeck

A member of the committee slapped a name tag over my left bosom. What shall we name the other one? I smiled. She was not amused. Erma Bombeck

Housework, if you do it right, will kill you. 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

Never have more children than you have car windows. 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

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday. 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

When humor goes, there goes civilization. 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

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown. 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

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

Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone? 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead. Erma Bombeck

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

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. Erma Bombeck

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