Ludwig Bemelmans > Quotes

“In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines
Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines
In two straight lines they broke their bread
And brushed their teeth and went to bed.
They left the house at half past nine
In two straight lines in rain or shine-
The smallest one was Madeline.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans, Madeline

“It's always wonderful when something altogether wrong ends right, without the help of either religion or the police.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans

“The purpose of art is to console and amuse—myself, and, I hope, others.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans

“For gypsies do not like to stay -
They only come to go away.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans, Madeline and the Gypsies

“Only one who has known how troubled life can be, has a real appreciation of it when it is good”
― Ludwig Bemelmans

“We are writing for children...not idiots.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans

“They smiled at the good, and frowned at the bad, and sometimes they were very sad.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans

“I can’t paint, I can’t write, I can’t sing, but I can decorate and run a house, and light it, and heat it, and have it like a living thing, and so right that it will be the envy of the world, the standard of perfect hospitality.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans, To the One I Love the Best

“In the middle of the night, Miss Clavel turned on the light and said, "something is not right!" 1941

- Ludwig Bemelmans (American, 1898–1962) -”
― Ludwig Bemelmans

“There was a solid air about him as he walked through the pandemonium of the plant in his conservative gray suits. The thin veins on his massive cheeks were like the engraving on gilt-edged securities.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans

“I am the equal of anyone in this room, and the superior of most.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans, To the One I Love the Best

“As he always did before retiring, so tonight he pulled out a drawer of his night table and took from it a small black ledger in which he wrote down the day's expenditures in a script so small that he could have written the Lord's Prayer on the heads of pins with it.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans, Dirty Eddie

“write to allow myself the luxury of painting. I am a painter and not a writer, and you will always see my books rather than hear them. I paint with type, and that is hard, for type has no colour, no variety beyond the dictionary and the stored information in the reader’s mind. Like music, painting starts where words end. ‘I have never attended one of my own exhibitions with any degree of pleasure. I always feel as if I were undressed and on exhibition myself. I always run away. I wish a way of acquiring pictures or dogs could be found other than by going into a gallery or a pet shop or buying them over a table.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans, To the One I Love the Best

“The pie he put on a shelf over the oven, and he unpacked a fruit salad that looked as if the remains of a lot of Old Fashioneds had been spilled into a wooden bowl.”
― Ludwig Bemelmans, Dirty Eddie