Who Said What About Glasgow, fondly known as Glesga?

Have you been to Glasgow and seen a civilization entirely unspoiled by religion?

......Eric Gill, Letter to Geoffrey Keynes, 30 October, 1919

The curses of Glasgow are, itch, punch, cotton, and metaphysics.

......Sydney Smith, Letter to Sir George Philips, September 1838

Glasgow plays the part of Chicago to Edinburgh's Boston. Glasgow is a city of the glad hand and the smack on the back; Edinburgh is a city of silence until birth or brains open the social circle. In Glasgow a man is innocent until he is found guilty; in Edinburgh a man is guilty until he is found innocent. Glasgow is willing to believe the best of an unknown quantity; Edinburgh, like all aristocracies, the worst! Glasgow is a mighty and an inspiring story. She is Scotland's anchor to reality.

......H.V. Morton, In Search of Scotland, 1929

This is wrote at a place which I shall ever hold in contempt as being filled with a set of unmannerly, low-bred, narrow-minded wretches; the place itself, however, is really pretty.

......David Boswell, Letter to James Boswell, Glasgow, 30 October 1767

Glasgow fine streets, fires enormous, houses hot, same smell as Edinburgh, the look of manufacture and abomination. Travelled all night, and on rolling over a bridge near Gretna Green into England all of us inside passengers gave three cheers.

.....Benjamin Robert Haydon, Diary, December 1820

'Heaven seems vera little improvement on Glesga,' a good Glasgow man is said to have murmured, after death, to a friend who had predeceased him.

'Man, this is no Heaven,' the other replied.
......C.E. Montague, The Right Place, 1924

The Glasgow man is downright, unpolished, direct, and immediate. He may seem to compare in that respect with the Aberdonian, but in him there is none of that queer Teutonic reserve, which is so apt to affect human intercourse with the native of Buchan. That he is a mighty man with his hands the world knows and acknowledges; that he is nearer the poet than his brothers in the other cities is less obvious, but equally true.
He has the 'furious' quality of the Scot in its most extreme form. He can be terribly dangerous in revolt and as terribly strong in defence of his own conception of order. He hates pretence, ceremonial, form - and is at the same time capable of the most abysmal sentimentality. He is grave - and one of the world's most devastating humorists.

......George Blake, The Heart of Scotland, 1934

Where have I seen a human being looking .
As Glasgow looks this gin-clear evening - with face and fingers
A cadaverous blue, hand-clasp slimy and cold
As that of a corpse, finger-nails grown immensely long
As they do in a grave, little white eyes, and hardly
Any face at all? Cold, lightning-like, unpleasant light, and blue.
Like having one's cold-spots intoxicated with mescal. .
Looking down a street the houses seem
Long pointed teeth like a ferret's over the slit Of a crooked unspeakable smile, like the Thracian woman's
When Thales fell in the well, a hag
Whose soul-gelding ugliness would chill
To eternal chastity a cantharidized satyr;
And the smell reminds me of the odeur de souris Of Balzac's Cousin Pons.
All the strength seems To leave my body as I look, and a deadly Grey weariness falls over my thoughts like dust.
A terrible shadow descends like dust over my thoughts,
Almost like reading a Glasgow Herald leader,
Or any of our Anglo-Scottish daily papers..

......Hugh MacDiarmid, Glasgow, from Lucky Poet, 1943

And without fear of contradiction I will venture to say You are the second grandest city in Scotland at the present day

...... William Topaz McGonagall, 'Glasgow', Poetic Gems, 1890

We've still got the grafting kinship, banter and urban ingenuity it once took to build Glasgow into the Second City of the Empire...It's what comes from generations of social deprivation, the working class socialist lifeblood that bubbled harshly in the roasting collieries, filtered its way from the dark, smog-ridden Clyde and motivated the entire City towards its historical regeneration. To have gone through everything we've gone through and still be able to laugh it all off, is the Glasgow Patter all over!

.....Scott Docherty

http://www.top-ten-glasgow-guide.com

SEE WHO SAID WHAT ABOUT...

Edinburgh
Inverness, The Capital of the Scottish Highlands
The Scottish Islands
The Scottish Mountains
The Scots