Famous QUOTES from Ireland’s county ANTRIM

“It looks like the beginning of the world, somehow: the sea looks older than in other places, the hills and rocks strange, and formed differently from other rocks and hills — as those vast dubious monsters were formed who possessed the earth before man.”– William Makepiece Thackeray on the Giant’s Causeway, 1842
“The Giant’s Causeway is a great natural curiosity, a vast collection of basaltic pillars, some standing upright, others fallen, and all fitted together like the cells of a honeycomb.” – Thackeray visited the Giant’s Causeway during his trip to Ireland for The Irish Sketch Book (1843) by William Thackeray (1811-1863):
He, I know not why, shewed upon all occasions an aversion to go to Ireland, where I proposed to him that we should make a tour. JOHNSON. ‘It is the last place where I should wish to travel.’ BOSWELL. ‘Should you not like to see Dublin, Sir?’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir! Dublin is only a worse capital.’ BOSWELL. ‘Is not the Giant’s Causeway worth seeing?’ JOHNSON. ‘Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.’James Boswell, lift of Johnson, 12 October I7i9
A sensation of excited curiosity soon gives place to a combined feeling of astonishment, admiration, and delight. The imagination can have pictured nothing like it, written accounts have conveyed to us no idea of its marvels; the artist has altogether failed in rendering us familiar with the reality – Samuel Carter Hall and Anna Maria Hall, Ireland, its scenery and character (1841-43)
There is probably no town in Ireland where the happy effects of English taste and industry are more conspicuous than at Lisburn. – Samuel Carter Hall and Anna Maria Hall, Ireland, its scenery and character (1841-43)
“It was, if I may say so, the smallest mutton chop I have ever seen … I can only conclude that it was hacked, gartered and hewn from the posterior of a mountain ram when Holy Saint Patrick was a boy on the mountains of Antrim.” – John B Keane (1928-2002).
“The Glens of Antrim, with their green secret places, their streams and waterfalls, weave a magic that is all their own.” – John Hewitt (1907-1987):
“I have seen landscapes, notably in the Antrim coast, which under a particular light made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge.” – C.S. Lewis (1898-1963):
“The Causeway coast is a place where the sea and stone converse, where the basalt speaks of ancient fires.” – Seamus Heaney (1939-2013):
“The landscape in Ireland is just – I’ve never been in such a beautiful place with the lakes and ocean and everything.” – Liam Neeson: Born June 7, 1952
“The Giant’s Causeway is a place where the hand of nature has shaped a spectacle that defies belief, with its basalt columns standing like giants’ stepping stones.” – Laurence Sterne: 1713-1768.
It is impossible to be gloomy for long in Belfast. I was feeling rather depressed one afternoon when I turned a comer and saw on a gable-end the familiar NO POPE HERE. And underneath, in different coloured paint, LUCKY OLD POPE! – Dervla Murphy, A Place Apart, 1978
“If you haven’t noticed how cosmopolitan your city has become. How aloof. How class we are because we live here. We have overpriced department stores and bars that turn away ugly people and coffee shops at every corner and a fleet of red open topped buses that taxi a group of baffled tourists around the city from the hole in the ground where the Titanic was built to West Belfast where someone that’s written IRA on the wall.” – Paul Kennedy (form the 2013 movie Made in Belfast).
“Where the green glens of Antrim are calling to me.” — The Wolfe Tones – The Green Glens of Antrim
Leaving Cushendall we enter a wild country, surrounded on all sides by most magnificent mountains, down which run innumerable streams, marked in the distance and, after a few miles, we ascend a steep hill road above the graceful sea-village of Cushendun, at the head of a small bay, into which rushes the rapid river Glenarm, crossed by a picturesque bridge. A most extended and most beautiful prospect is presented from every part of this road; a lovely valley on the one hand and the open sea on the other. – Samuel Carter Hall and Anna Maria Hall, Ireland, its scenery and character (1841-43)
Antrim is Paisley country; when I stopped at a crossroads petrol station to ask the way a young attendant abruptly (and absurdly) said, ‘Don’t know: Further down the road, two youths curtly gave directions while eyeing me with a mixture of suspicion and derision. On the outskirts of Ballymena I cycled between rows of preternaturally clean bungalows with shining windows, fresh paint, gleaming brass ornaments on gleaming tiled mantelpieces, washed and ironed curtains and not the tiniest weed visible in any garden. An hour later, on a quiet country road, an overtaking car slowed and began to follow me. My heart lurched, as it would not have done west of the Bann, and the next few minutes seemed long. When the ancient Mini overtook me, the passenger door was opened by one of the two youths to whom I had spoken earlier and I was treated to an indecent gesture. –– Dervla Murphy (1931-2022).
“A few red carts in a fog creak flax to the dubs/ And sheep in the high heather cry hungrily that life is hard; /a plaintive peace; shepherds and peasants.” – Robinson Jeffers, Antrim, 1931
“Oh, Bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see / Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree.” — Bonny Portmore
The Lord in His Mercy be good to Belfast /The grief of the exile she soothed as he passed. – Traditional
“For Antrim Town, for Antrim Town, he led them to the fray.” — Roddy McCorley
“Loughareema, Loughareema / When the sun goes down at seven.” — The Fairy Lough (Songs of the Glens of Antrim)
They call Belfast the Irish Liverpool. If people are for calling names, it would be better to call it the Irish London at once , the chief city of the kingdom at any rate. It Jooks hearty, thriving and prosperous, as if it had money in its pockets, and roast-beef for dinner: it has no pretensions to fashion, but looks mayhap better in its honest broadcloth than some people in their shabby brocade. The houses are as handsome as at Dublin, with this advantage, that the people seem to live in them. – W.M. Thackeray, The Irish Sketch Book of 1842, 1843
In Belfast they are of opinion that the Battle of the Boyne took place last Saturday week; actually, it happened in 1690. – MJ. MacManus, Irish Cavalcade, 1939
Watching the shadowy Antrim Hills appearing along the horizon I felt confused. This was my first approach from Britain and of course I felt that I was going back to my own island. Yet I was not going home. – Dervla Murphy (1931-2022).
Other Irish towns may present more picturesque forms to the eye. But Belfast is the only large Irish town in which the traveller is not disgusted by the loathsome aspect and odour of long lines of human dens far inferior in comfort and cleanliness to the dwellings which, in happier countries, are provided for cattle. No other large Irish town is so well cleaned, so well paved, so brilliantly lighted. The place of domes and spires is supplied by edifices, less pleasing to the taste, but not less indicative of prosperity, huge factories, towering many stories above the chimneys of the houses, and resounding with the roar of machinery. – T.B. Macaulay, History of England, 1849-61
The situation of Belfast is therefore most auspicious. It is a new town, and has a new look. It is an improving town, and signs of improvement, recent and progressing, are everywhere apparent – Samuel Carter Hall and Anna Maria Hall, Ireland, its scenery and character (1841-43)
Belfast, devout and profane and hard,/ Built on reclaimed mud, hammers playing in the shipyard /Time punched with holes like a steel sheet, time Hardening the faces, veneering with a grey and speckled rime/ The faces under the shawls and caps:/ This was my mother-city, these my paps. Country of callous lava cooled to stone, /Of minute sodden haycocks, of ship-sirens’ moan, Of falling intonations.. Louis MacNcicc, Valediction, January 1934While Dublin is obviously a capital, though a seedy and impoverished one, Belfast is mean and provincial. Too many of its shops are branches of well-known London emporiums, the whole place is depressing, and the note is a dull opinionativeness. The things which struck me most were the number of swans and newsboys, the out-of-the-wayness of the obviously unwanted Parliament House, and the age of the taxi-cabs. The one in which we made the tour of the city was fusty with old leather, smelling of all the funerals I have ever attended. Intellectually the place is as backward as Spain. – James Agate, Ego 3, 15 August 1936
“In Belfast, you might fancy yourself in Liverpool or Glasgow, only that the accent is a little too English for the one, and a great deal too Scotch for the other.” – John Gamble (1770-1831).
The high tone which literature and science have given to its people, have, as it were, created a some¬ what peculiar class ; for knowledge elevates while it improves ; and a large proportion of the merchants and manufacturers of Belfast are “gentry” in the most emphatic sense of the term ; education, and a thirst for learning^ having, in a remarkable degree, prevented the sordid habits too frequently engendered by trade. – Samuel Carter Hall and Anna Maria Hall, Ireland, its scenery and character (1841-43)
Red brick in the suburbs, white horse on the wall, Ex Italian marbles in the City Hall:/ O stranger from England, why stand so aghast? /May the Lord in His mercy be kind lo Belfast/ This jewel that houses our hopes and our fears/ Was knocked up from the swamp in the last hundred years;/ But the last shall be first and the first shall be last/ May the Lord in His mercy by kind to Belfast./ We swore by King William there’d never be seen / An all-Irish parliament at College Green,/ So at Stormont we’re nailing the flag to the mast:/ May the Lord in His merry ht kind to Belfast./ Oh the bricks they will bleed and the rain it will weep, /And the damp Lagan fog lull the city to sleep;/ It’s to hell with the future and live on the past:/ May the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast./ Maurice James Craig, Ballad to a Traditional Refrain,
The cleanly and bustling appearance of Belfast is decidedly unnational. That it is in Ireland, but not of it, is a remark ever on the lips of visitors from the south or west – Samuel Carter Hall and Anna Maria Hall, Ireland, its scenery and character (1841-43)
“I went to Belfast once, and the pub owner had an accent so thick, you’d need a machete to cut through it. He shouted ‘Time, gentlemen!’ and I thought he was declaring war.” – Niall Tóibín (1929-2019).
The Giant’s Causeway. ‘But where, if you please, is the Causeway?’. ‘That’s the Causeway before you,’ says the guide. ‘Which?’. ‘That pier which you sec jutting out into the bay. right ahead.’ ‘Mon ditu! and I travelled a hundred and fifty miles to see that!’. I declare, upon my conscience, the barge moored at Hungerford Market is a more majestic object and seems to occupy as much space….. And now, by force of money, having got rid of the sea and land beggars, you are at liberty to examine the wonders of the place…. The solitude is awful. It. looks like the beginning of the world, somehow: the sea looks older than in other places, the hills and rocks strange, and formed differently from other rocks and hills – as those vast dubious monsters were formed who possessed the earth before man. The hill-tops are shattered into a thousand cragged fantastical shapes; the water comes swelling into scores of little strange creeks, or goes off with a leap, roaring into those mysterious caves yonder, which penetrate who knows how far into our common world. The savage rock-sides are painted of a hundred colours. Does the sun ever shine here? When the world was moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been the bit ovtr – a remnant of chaos! Think of that! – it is a tailor’s simile. – W.M. Thackeray, The Irish Sketch Book of 1842, 1843.
Young Earth Creationists believe that the earth was created some 6,000 years ago. This is based on a specific interpretation of the Bible and, in particular, the account of creation in the Book of Genesis. Some people around the word and specifically here in Ireland share this perspective. Young Earth Creationists continue to debate questions about the age of the earth. As we have seen from the past and understand today perhaps the Giants Causeway will continue to prompt awe and arouse debate and challenging questions for as long as visitors come here. – Voiceover on video at Giants Causeway visitor centre (since removed).
The bold range of mountains, stretching northward of the town, and skirting the western side of the valley of the Lagan, contrasts strongly with the fertility of the valley itself, and the rich cultivation of the opposite hills of Down. – Samuel Carter Hall and Anna Maria Hall, Ireland, its scenery and character (1841-43)
Belfast, a fine place, with rough people. – Charles Dickens, Letter, 1858, in Forster, Life of Dickens, 1872-3