"There is a high cost for low living"
About this Quote
A phrase like this lands because it treats “low living” less as a vibe and more as a debt you don’t see until the bills come due. Edwin Louis Cole, a Christian men’s author and speaker best known for urging moral discipline, compresses a whole worldview into one blunt economic metaphor: you may think you’re cutting corners, but you’re really taking out a loan against your future self.
The specific intent is corrective, almost pastoral. Cole isn’t warning about a single bad habit; he’s indicting a posture - the temptation to trade integrity for convenience, character for appetite, responsibility for escape. By framing it as “high cost,” he borrows the language of markets and household budgeting, which makes the moral point feel practical rather than pious. It’s not “sin is wrong” so much as “this will bankrupt you.”
The subtext is accountability without melodrama. “Low living” is deliberately vague, letting the listener supply their own evidence: a relationship thinned by selfishness, a career stalled by shortcuts, a mind dulled by constant indulgence. The line implies that consequences aren’t arbitrary punishment; they’re built into the choice itself. That’s why it stings - it denies the fantasy of consequence-free living.
Context matters: late-20th-century self-help and evangelical masculinity movements often spoke in the idiom of discipline, leadership, and personal responsibility. Cole’s sentence sounds like a proverb because it wants to function like one: simple enough to memorize, sharp enough to interrupt impulse, stern enough to feel like wisdom rather than scolding.
The specific intent is corrective, almost pastoral. Cole isn’t warning about a single bad habit; he’s indicting a posture - the temptation to trade integrity for convenience, character for appetite, responsibility for escape. By framing it as “high cost,” he borrows the language of markets and household budgeting, which makes the moral point feel practical rather than pious. It’s not “sin is wrong” so much as “this will bankrupt you.”
The subtext is accountability without melodrama. “Low living” is deliberately vague, letting the listener supply their own evidence: a relationship thinned by selfishness, a career stalled by shortcuts, a mind dulled by constant indulgence. The line implies that consequences aren’t arbitrary punishment; they’re built into the choice itself. That’s why it stings - it denies the fantasy of consequence-free living.
Context matters: late-20th-century self-help and evangelical masculinity movements often spoke in the idiom of discipline, leadership, and personal responsibility. Cole’s sentence sounds like a proverb because it wants to function like one: simple enough to memorize, sharp enough to interrupt impulse, stern enough to feel like wisdom rather than scolding.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Discipline |
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