Parenting & Family Quote by George Dennison Prentice

Prentice nails a social truth with the clipped cruelty of a newsroom man: adulthood isn’t a shared destination, it’s a performance some never learn and some never stop faking. The line works because it’s built on a stark double bind. One group “can never have been children” suggests people so self-possessed, guarded, or prematurely hardened that their innocence feels like a historical impossibility. The other group “could never be anything else” points at the opposite pathology: perpetual juvenility as temperament, privilege, or refusal to grow up.

The subtext is less psychological than moral and civic. In the mid-19th-century American public sphere, where Prentice operated as a combative editor in Louisville, character was currency. Newspapers traded in reputations, not nuance, and “maturity” was shorthand for reliability, restraint, and fitness to hold power. Read that way, the quote isn’t a gentle observation; it’s a sorting mechanism. It flatters the hard-edged adults who treat sentiment as weakness, while also warning that some people are permanently unserious, unfit for responsibility, maybe even dangerous in public life.

The irony is that both extremes can be forms of immaturity. The person who “never was a child” may be emotionally stunted, confusing toughness with depth. The eternal child can be charming, but also evasive. Prentice’s real target is the masquerade itself: the way society rewards either armor or adolescence, and leaves little room for the messy middle where most people actually live.