Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.

Meaning of the quote

The teacher's students were both a lifeline and a burden for her. The students allowed her to earn a living, but they also made her life so difficult that it felt hardly worth living. She was torn between needing the students to survive and being overwhelmed by the challenges they brought.

About P. G. Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse was an acclaimed English writer and humorist who created beloved characters like Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. He was a prolific author, publishing over 90 books, 40 plays, and 200 short stories during his long career. Despite facing controversy later in life, Wodehouse’s witty and whimsical works have endured as classics of 20th-century literature.

More about the author

More quotes from P. G. Wodehouse

She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say “when!”

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say “when.”

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Golf… is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Why don’t you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Golf, like measles, should be caught young.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

To find a man’s true character, play golf with him.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)

Flowers are happy things.

P. G. Wodehouse

English author (1881-1975)