quick and the dead

Idioms  

1. The living and the dead, as in The explosion was loud enough to wake the quick and the dead. Although quick has been used for “living” since the 9th century a.d., it survives only in this idiom and in cut to the quick, and may be obsolescent.

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Example Sentences

People everywhere were presented with an existential choice between the quick and the dead, between one world and none.

From Salon • Aug. 14, 2025

Nathan's characters — both the quick and the dead — experience hell, but the reader winds up somewhere closer to purgatory.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 16, 2018

In her reply to the critics of “The First Stone,” she describes “eros” as “the quick spirit that moves between people—quick as in the distinction between ‘the quick and the dead.’

From The New Yorker • Dec. 4, 2016

Eventually, they return; as the video endlessly loops, it offers a haunting metaphor for the unknowable boundary between the quick and the dead.

From New York Times • May 6, 2010

Your bright eyes bear down on me without cease, on behalf of the quick and the dead.

From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver