"This thing, whatever it is, that glistens here on earth"

But whatever else there may be that is more dear than life,
darkness hides it, wrapping it round in clouds.
We show ourselves to be infatuated lovers
of this thing, whatever it is, that glistens here on earth,
for we have no experience of another life
and no revelation of what lies below the ground,
but we drift on a sea of idle myths.

The nurse in Euripides' Hippolytus, ll. 191-197, trans. James Morwood (Medea, Hippolytus, Electra, Helen, trans. & ed. James Morwood, Oxford world's classics (Oxford & New York:  Oxford University Press, 1998), 44).  Greek on p. 176 here.