"Do not plan for ventures before finishing what's at hand"
About this Quote
Euripides is handing you a rule of craft disguised as a moral. “Do not plan for ventures before finishing what’s at hand” isn’t anti-ambition; it’s anti-fantasy. The line cuts at a familiar human flaw: the way we use the next project as anesthesia for the hard, unglamorous middle of the current one. In a culture that prized measure and self-command, the warning lands as practical wisdom, not motivational wallpaper. Finish the thing. Then dream.
The intent is partly ethical, partly strategic. In Greek tragedy, characters don’t just suffer from bad luck; they suffer from misordered priorities and overreaching. Premature plotting reads as a form of hubris: acting as if you control the future while neglecting the duty right in front of you. Euripides, famously skeptical about grand heroic narratives, keeps the emphasis on the present tense: the domestic, the immediate, the unfinished business that will come due whether you acknowledge it or not.
The subtext is sharper than productivity advice. Planning “ventures” can be a way to launder desire into something that feels responsible. You can tell yourself you’re being visionary while actually avoiding accountability. Euripides punctures that self-deception. In the tragic universe, unattended obligations metastasize; neglected “at hand” matters become the very forces that later destroy the plans.
Context matters: Euripides wrote during Athens’ volatility, when political confidence and imperial appetite repeatedly outran reality. The quote reads like a quiet rebuke to a city (and a psyche) addicted to the next conquest while the current crisis is still burning.
The intent is partly ethical, partly strategic. In Greek tragedy, characters don’t just suffer from bad luck; they suffer from misordered priorities and overreaching. Premature plotting reads as a form of hubris: acting as if you control the future while neglecting the duty right in front of you. Euripides, famously skeptical about grand heroic narratives, keeps the emphasis on the present tense: the domestic, the immediate, the unfinished business that will come due whether you acknowledge it or not.
The subtext is sharper than productivity advice. Planning “ventures” can be a way to launder desire into something that feels responsible. You can tell yourself you’re being visionary while actually avoiding accountability. Euripides punctures that self-deception. In the tragic universe, unattended obligations metastasize; neglected “at hand” matters become the very forces that later destroy the plans.
Context matters: Euripides wrote during Athens’ volatility, when political confidence and imperial appetite repeatedly outran reality. The quote reads like a quiet rebuke to a city (and a psyche) addicted to the next conquest while the current crisis is still burning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
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