Pt. V; see also the later phrasing of Malcolm Fraser, "life wasn't meant to be easy"
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Source: The Red Magician (1982), Chapter 9 (p. 137)
“Life wasn't meant to be easy.”
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: No One Belongs Here More Than You
"Obstacles to Happiness", p. 78
Awareness (1992)
Context: Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don't you experience it? Because you've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!
The Human Comedy (1943)
Context: Death is not an easy thing for anyone to understand, least of all a child, but every life shall one day end. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us. His body can be taken, but not him. You shall know your father better as you grow and know yourself better. He is not dead, because you are alive. Time and accident, illness and weariness took his body, but already you have given it back to him, younger and more eager than ever. I don't expect you to understand anything I'm telling you. But I know you will remember this — that nothing good ever ends. If it did, there would be no people in the world — no life at all, anywhere. And the world is full of people and full of wonderful life.
O fortunati miei dolci martiri!
S'impetrerò che giunto seno a seno,
L'anima mia nella tua bocca io spiri.
Canto II, stanza 35 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)
“Courage, mon ami, le diable est mort! / Take courage, my friend, the devil is dead!”
Source: The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), CHAPTER XXIII
