Life wasn't meant to be easy.

 

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), he'd actually used it or known the sentiment for many years prior; according to an interview for the Australian Biography project (1994).)

 

Malcolm Fraser

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Life is not meant to be easy, my child but take courage: it can be delightful.

 

George Bernard Shaw

 

I couldn't get that same feeling during the day, with my hands in dirty dish water and the hard sun showing up the dirtiness on the roof tops. And after a time, even at night, the feeling of God didn't last. I began to wonder what the minister meant when he said, "God, the father, sees even the smallest sparrow fall. He watches over all his children." That jumbled it all up for me. But I was sure of one thing. If God were a father, with children, that cleanliness I had been feeling wasn't God. So at night, when I went to bed, I would think, "I am clean. I am sleepy." And then I went to sleep. It didn't keep me from enjoying the cleaness any less. I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.

 

Frances Farmer

 

I wish you would mention the joy she had for life, that’s what she gave me. If she was the tragic figure they say she was, I would be a wreck, wouldn't I? It was her love of life that carried her through everything. The middle of the road was never for her — it bored her. She wanted the pinnacle of excitement. If she was happy, she wasn’t just happy, she was ecstatic. And when she was sad, she was sadder then anyone. She lived eight lives in one, and yet I thought she would outlive us all. She was a great star, and a great talent, and for the rest of my life I will be proud to be Judy Garland's daughter. It wasn’t suicide, it wasn’t sleeping pills, it wasn’t cirrhosis. I think she was just tired, like a flower that blooms and gives joy and beauty to the world and then wilts away.

 

Judy Garland

 

She was not an easy woman to categorize or to explain. If I´ve ever known anyone in my life, man or woman, who was unique, it was she. There was nobody like her before or since. Never will be. In every way. In talent, in looks, in character, in temperament. Everything. There sure wasn't anybody who didn't fall under her spell.

 

Henry Fonda

 

He thought he was gonna die,
But he didn't.
She thought she just couldn't cope,
But she did.
We thought it would be so hard,
But it wasn't...
It wasn't easy, though!

 

Kate Bush