Familiarity means ‘close acquaintance’. In human relationships it may lead to
undue intimacy, as when a master treats his servants with so much laxity that
they regard themselves as his superiors rather than as his inferiors. In
another sense, familiarity can cause us to look on really important things as
being of no account; we know them so well and enjoy them so often that we
accept them without gratitude or thankfulness.

If we do a thing many times that it becomes a habit, we are liable to get
careless. For example, a spiderman, one who works on high buildings in course
of erection, may become so accustomed to walking along girders that
familiarity breeds contempt and one day he misses his footing and falls to his
death.

##### See also:

* Distance lends enchantment to the view
* No man is a hero to his valet
* Respect is greater from a distance