3

I wrote:

The moral of the story is that you should control the amount of your favor to others.

It wants to say that you shouldn't do much favor to someone, because they may ignore or forget your favor...

It can also mean when you care too much about someone, he/she may find your favor your duty or as an ordinary thing.

How can I say the bold part in a natural and idiomatic way? Or what are the related phrases to this point?

Improve this question
2
  • 3
    I think the way I would phrase it is that you should limit the number of favors you do for people. While "favor" is a legitimate word, it means something like "an attitude of liking someone or something". I think what you mean is favors instead, which means something like "acts of kindness".
    – stangdon
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 15:02
  • 1
    What @stangdon said. Your use of singular favour as an uncountable abstract noun (with the "attitude" sense, syntactically equivalent to, say, love) is at least "dated", if not actually archaic.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 17:07

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4

A few related phrases might be:

Don't let people take advantage of you.

Don't let people walk all over you.

Don't be a doormat.

All of these mean that you shouldn't sacrifice too much for others when they're not going to return the favor. If somebody does not appreciate the things you do for them (because they're so used to you doing things for them), they take you for granted. You could say:

If you do too much for someone, they might take you for granted.

Compared to the previous phrases, this does not imply as strongly that the other person's behavior is intentional.

A related idiom is to bend over backwards, which means to try very hard to help, perhaps at personal cost. But this does not necessarily imply that the other person won't pay you back.

Improve this answer
3
  • Great! However it can also mean when you care too much for someone, he/she may find your favor your duty or as an ordinary thing.
    – Ahmad
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 15:18
  • 4
    If somebody thinks getting favors from you is ordinary, you might say that they take you for granted.
    – Alpha Draconis
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 15:21
  • I like "to take advantage of", the "doormat" phrase sounds very weird to me.
    – ventsyv
    Commented Jan 5, 2017 at 19:15
2

One possible expression would be

Don't be a doormat for others.

A doormat, in this case, being a person who accepts being treated badly and does not complain about it. An extension of this would be

Don't let people walk all over you.

meaning don't let people take advantage of you.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .