“Beauty vanishes like a vapor,
Preach the men of musty morals.”

“The whole history of religion is a history of the failure of preaching. Preaching is moral violence.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

“By Crom, I do not like this place, where dead men rise, and sleeping men vanish into the bellies of shadows!”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

“Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.”

Richard Baxter (1615–1691) English Puritan church leader, poet, and hymn-writer

“For beauty called to beauty and there thronged at the enchanter's will
The vanished hours of love that burn within the Ever-living still.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

“How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

“Men preach Philosophy, women practise it.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

“But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
However rare—rare it be;
And when I crumble, who will remember
This lady of the West Country?”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

“We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist