Best 306 quotes of Erma Bombeck on MyQuotes

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste.

Adults are always telling young people, 'These are the best years of your life.' Are they? I don't know. Sometimes when adults say this to children I look into their faces. They look like someone on the top seat of the Ferris wheel who has had too much cotton candy and barbecue. They'd like to get off and be sick but everyone keeps telling them what a good time they're having.

Adults can take a simple holiday for Children and screw it up. What began as a presentation of simple gifts to delight and surprise children around the Christmas tree has culminated in a woman unwrapping six shrimp forks from her dog, who drew her name.

A fitting room to me has always been like a confessional ... where my body and my contrition take up the entire room.

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.

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.

After age twelve, birthdays should be as private as hernia surgery.

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

A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn't charge more after midnight - or anything before midnight.

A grandparent will accept your calls from anywhere, collect.

A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.

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.

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.

Any mother with half a skull knows that when Daddy's little boy becomes Mommy's little boy, the kid is so wet he's treading water.

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

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

A small waist makes you tire easily.

Authorities say brain cells may shrink, but they don't necessarily die. Frankly, I am cheered by the fact that something is shrinking. I'd be even more thrilled if what was shrinking affected my dress size, but you can't have everything.

Babies on television never spit up on the Ultrasuede.

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.

Before we sent kids to computer camps and told them they were having a good time, there was imagination among the human species.

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

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.

Bombeck's Rug Rule: an ugly carpet will last for ever.

. . . 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.

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

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

Cats invented self-esteem.

Children make your life important.

Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood.

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

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.

Crocodiles have a smile I've seen on the face of every lawyer I've ever met.

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

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

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.

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

Early in my life I had made a pact with myself. I would never eat anything that moved when I cooked it, excited the dog, or inflated upon impact with my teeth.

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

Enter my first neighbor - a woman who spoke in complete, coherent sentences, who ate with a knife and fork and who only cried at weddings. I couldn't help myself. In a dramatic gesture, I bolted the door and threw my body across it to prevent her exit. She understood.

Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" Wasn't there any change?

Every puppy should have a boy.

Explain to me how he [her son] can ride a bicycle, run, play ball, set up a camp, swing, fight a war, swim and race for eight hours ... and has to be driven to the garbage can.

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.

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

For some unexplained reason, it's always the other end of the table that's wild and raucous, with screaming laughter and a fella who plays 'Holiday for Strings' on water glasses.

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.

For years, my husband and I have advocated separate vacations. But the kids keep finding us.

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.