Life & Wisdom Quote by Euripides

Ambition has a way of making the nearest obligations look like clutter. Euripides needles that impulse with a line that’s basically a preventative medicine against self-sabotage: don’t insult what’s in front of you while you’re fixated on what’s over the horizon. The verb “slight” matters. It’s not just “ignore” or “forget,” but a small, almost casual act of disrespect - the kind that feels harmless in the moment and only later reveals its cost.

As a tragedian, Euripides is writing inside a culture obsessed with reputation, duty, and the delicate economy of reciprocity. In Greek life, “what’s near” isn’t only physical proximity; it’s kinship, alliances, household stability, the everyday rituals that keep you inside the circle of protection. “What’s far” is the glittering prize: glory, conquest, a new marriage, a political win, the long shot that flatters the ego. Tragedy is crowded with characters who reach for the distant upgrade and, in the process, trample the relationships and constraints that were quietly holding their world together.

The line works because it refuses the romantic story we like to tell about striving. It doesn’t condemn ambition; it indicts tunnel vision. The subtext is pragmatic, almost brutal: the future you’re chasing is built out of present materials. Neglect those, and your grand plan doesn’t fail heroically - it collapses embarrassingly, because you treated your foundation like an inconvenience.