“As I said, I wish I could say it was easy. It wasn't, but it wasn't hard either. But without a strong reason or purpose, anything in life is hard.”

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Source: Lords and Ladies

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: Magic Slays

Book 3, Chap. 4.
Books, Coningsby (1844)

Fraser's best known phrase, generally taken as a gloomy explanation of life's difficulties, but for him rather it was a reason to take on difficult tasks. Not widely recognised as being in fact a paraphrase of a line from George Bernard Shaw's play Back to Methuselah: "Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful." Well known from his Alfred Deakin lecture speech (20 July 1971) https://web.archive.org/web/20070210111307/http://www.unimelb.edu.au/malcolmfraser/speeches/nonparliamentary/towards2000.html, he'd actually used it or known the sentiment for many years prior; according to an interview for the Australian Biography project (1994) http://www.australianbiography.gov.au/fraser/interview6.html.)

Source: Green Angel

2006 Delaware US Senate race
Context: :There's much that I want to say, that I, uh, I wish I wasn't privy to some of the classified information that I am privy to because I think that, um

Source: Pink Smog