to the quick

“So Bocchus was left to chew his nails down to the quick and wonder why he had ever succumbed to Jugurtha’s blandishments.”

The First Man in Rome

“They are all Communicants, but the temptations which surround them are very great, and early familiarity with heathen practices and modes of thought may yet deaden the conscience to the quick apprehension of the first approaches of sin.”

Life of John Coleridge Patteson

“It was a tribute to the quick and the dead but it was also old George Bulman saying, "See here, all of you.”

The HurricaneStory

“But they were either less improved, or less susceptible of improvement: the engines of antiquity, the catapultae, balistae, and battering-rams, were still of most frequent and powerful use in the attack and defence of fortifications; nor was the decision of battles reduced to the quick and heavy fire of a line of infantry, whom it were fruitless to protect with armor against a similar fire of their enemies.”

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“But yet recalling myself, thought I, I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you: Oh! I saw in this condition I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children; yet, thought I, I must do it, I must do it: and now I thought on those TWO MILCH KINE THAT WERE TO CARRY THE ARK OF GOD INTO ANOTHER COUNTRY, AND TO LEAVE THEIR CALVES BEHIND THEM.”

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners