All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.

The aphorism frames moral and personal excellence as inherently effortful: what is “good” (virtue, competence, integrity, growth) typically requires sustained work, self-control, and tolerance of discomfort. By contrast, “evil” and failure modes are portrayed as default paths of least resistance—giving up, cutting corners, rationalizing dishonesty, or settling into mediocrity. The list (“dying, losing, cheating…”) mixes moral wrongdoing with entropy and defeat to emphasize how quickly things degrade without active maintenance. The closing imperative—“Stay away from easy”—functions as a heuristic: be suspicious of choices that feel frictionless in the short term, because they may trade away long-term character, outcomes, or meaning.