Erma Bombeck

Journalist

1927-02-21

Quotes by Erma Bombeck

• We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

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• I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.

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• Girls mature faster than boys, cost more to raise, and statistics show that the old saw about girls not knowing about money and figures is a myth. Girls start to outspend boys before puberty— and they manage to maintain this lead until death or an ugly credit manager, whichever comes first. Males are born with a closed fist. Girls are born with the left hand cramped in a position the size of an American Express card. Whenever a girl sees a sign reading, "Sale, Going Out of Business, Liquidation," saliva begins to form in her mouth, the palms of her hands perspire and the pituitary gland says, "Go, Mama." In the male, it is quite a different story. He has a gland that follows a muscle from the right arm down to the base of his billfold pocket. It's called —cheap.— Girls can slam a door louder, beg longer, turn tears on and off like a faucet, and invented the term, "You don't trust me." So much for —sugar and spice and everything nice— and —snips and snails and puppydog tails.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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

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

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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• When humor goes, there goes civilization.

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

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• A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween.

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

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

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• Written on her tombstone: I told you I was sick.

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• 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?

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• Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.

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• I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food

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