“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.)