Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Scrupulous   Listen
adjective
Scrupulous  adj.  
1.
Full of scruples; inclined to scruple; nicely doubtful; hesitating to determine or to act, from a fear of offending or of doing wrong. "Abusing their liberty, to the offense of their weak brethren which were scrupulous."
2.
Careful; cautious; exact; nice; as, scrupulous abstinence from labor; scrupulous performance of duties.
3.
Given to making objections; captious. (Obs.) "Equality of two domestic powers Breed scrupulous faction."
4.
Liable to be doubted; doubtful; nice. (Obs.) "The justice of that cause ought to be evident; not obscure, not scrupulous."
Synonyms: Cautious; careful; conscientious; hesitating.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Scrupulous" Quotes from Famous Books



... is not sufficient: we must also vary our test. Let us, then, examine the insect's intelligence from another point of view, that of the introduction of foreign bodies into the cell. The Mason-bee is a housekeeper of scrupulous cleanliness, as indeed are all the Hymenoptera. Not a spot of dirt is suffered in her honey-pot; not a grain of dust is permitted on the surface of her mixture. And yet, while the jar is open, the precious Bee-bread is exposed to accidents. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... while his money lasted, and then, driven step by step to the brink of destitution, he had offered himself for employment in the lowest grade of his own profession, and been taken as assistant by the not over scrupulous chemist and druggist in that not too respectable neighborhood of Westminster, with a salary of ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... his offer had produced the expected results in the shape of a full tide of immigrants. He had, however, exercised a rigid personal supervision over these grants, and had done his utmost to prevent the abuse of his bountiful regulations. His successors were less scrupulous, and being, as has been seen, under the control of greedy and selfish persons, they permitted the public lands to be used as means of enriching and corrupting the favourites of the Administration. The land-granting department was honeycombed ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... manner fail of its effect upon their victims. The middle of the seventeenth century was the golden age, not only of the robber, but of the robbed. The game was played upon either side with a scrupulous respect for a potent, if unwritten, law. Neither might nor right was permitted to control the issue. A gaily attired, superbly mounted highwayman would hold up a coach packed with armed men, and take a purse from ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... but "the glory of God, by the civilization of the poor Indian." Upon his arrival in Pennsylvania, the pledge contained in his charter was redeemed by a friendly compact with the "poor Indian" which was never to be violated, and by a uniform and scrupulous devotion to his rights and interests. Oldmixon and Clarkson inform us, that he expended "thousands of pounds" for the physical and social improvement of these untutored and houseless tenants of the woods. His estate became impaired by the munificence of his bounty. In return for ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... Miss Doughty was still but a girl of fifteen; and there was the grave objection that the twain were first cousins. And besides, though Roger was of a kind and considerate disposition, truthful, honourable, and scrupulous in points of duty, he had certain habits which assumed serious proportions in the mind of a lady so strict in notions of propriety. He had in Paris acquired a habit of smoking immoderately. In the regiment he had been compelled, by evil customs then prevailing, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... a bad move on Silk's part. The question thrust home, and had he been content to leave the matter there, it might have been some time before the captain, with his own scrupulous way of regarding things, would have detected its fallacies. But, not for the first ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... from official records, the commercial and industrial interests of the United States and of England, especially, are presented in all their most important aspects and relations. The amount of information here given is immense; and knowing, as we do, the scrupulous care of the collector, we cannot doubt its accuracy. Independently of its connection with the author's argument, this feature of the work cannot fail to give it value and a permanent place in every library, office, counting-room, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... Pontgrave. Like other French adventurers of his time he is a brave and energetic man, ready to do, to dare, and, if need be, to suffer; but his primary object in life is to amass wealth, and to effect this object he is not over-scrupulous as to the means employed. On this occasion he has come over with instructions from Henry IV., King of France, to explore the St. Lawrence, to ascertain how far from its mouth navigation is practicable, and to make a survey of the country on its banks. He is accompanied on the expedition ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... which generally characterizes barbarous nations. They behaved well to prisoners, admitted foreigners freely to offices of high trust, gave an asylum to refugees, and treated them with respect and kindness, were scrupulous observers of their pledged word, and eminently faithful to their treaty obligations. On the other hand, it must be admitted that they had some customs which indicate a tinge of barbarism. They used torture for the extraction of answers from reluctant persons, employed the scourge ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... home of some poor gentleman who had seen better days, and whom necessity obliged to deny himself the poor luxury of a centime light. Possibly it was a little shopman, as the abbe had suggested, struggling with fortune—not scrupulous in honesty, and shunning observation; or it might be (who could tell) a sleek-faced villain, stealing about in the dusk, and far into the night, making the dim chamber his home only when more honest lodgers were ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... time that it should, for, while Mr. Rarey had been handsomely paid for his instruction, the more scrupulous of his subscribers were unable to practise his lessons for want of a place where they ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... Christi a long procession passed through the streets, where doors and windows were hung with carpets and tapestry. The worsted pictures, it is true, were adapted rather to a decorative than to a pious purpose, and over-scrupulous persons might be shocked at seeing Europa on her bull, or Psyche admiring the sleeping Cupid, on the route of a religious procession. Such anomalies, however, could well be disregarded. Around the sacred Host were gathered the dignitaries of the state and the city in their robes of office, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... massive door had vanished, sliding up and out of sight in the dark recess of the roof, leaving smooth, steel-lined slots at sides and bottom that reflected the polish of scrupulous care. Dolores stifled her surprise, and moved toward the heavy velvet hangings which still barred her way. These, too, were swept aside with no visible effort, and the girl stood on the threshold of ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... magnificent national pageant was conducted throughout with the most scrupulous attention to the customary etiquette of such occasions; and Tallyho, who had never witnessed any thing of the kind before, and consequently could have no conception of its splendour, was at various parts of the ceremony enraptured; he ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... a man of some fifty years of age, inclined to be stout, somewhat florid in complexion, and always dressed with scrupulous care. There was nothing about him to indicate that he belonged to the legal profession. His talk as a rule was genial and almost cheery, but his manner varied according to the circumstances. In his capacity ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... The less scrupulous and stupid threw aside all sense of shame. They weltered in the mire of fraud and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... memory of her father had in it elements of almost intolerable pathos, as though the child's brooding love and loyalty were in perpetual protest even now after this lapse of years against the verdict which an over-scrupulous, despondent soul had pronounced upon itself. Did she feel that he had gone uncomforted out of life—even by her—even by religion? Was ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... office? On such occasions do arbitrary princes want tools? Was Edward's court so virtuous or so humane, that it could furnish no assassin but the first prince of the blood? When the house of commons undertook to colour the king's resentment, was every member of it too scrupulous to lend ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... he was boisterously loud in his merriment, sometimes sullen and silent; and when Eustace, unwearied, reiterated his arguments, he replied to him, not only with complete want of the deference he was usually so scrupulous in paying to his dignity, but with rude and scurril taunts and jests on his youth, his clerkly education, and his inexperience. Eustace's patience would scarcely have held out, but that he perceived that d'Aubricour ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... manners did not lack the polish of the courtier. In the fulfilment of his charge he was ever prudent, cautious, and almost timid in the matter of accepting responsibility; in no sense covetous of office, he was yet so scrupulous in the discharge of duty, that he scarcely ever acted on his own judgment if he could possibly wring instructions from the Privy Council. His loyalty, uprightness, courtesy, and modesty, stood him in ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... this light, no: do not wrong him. He's Too scrupulous that way: it is his vice. No, he's a rare physician, do him right, An excellent Paracelsian, and has done Strange cures with mineral physic. He deals all With spirits, he; he will not hear a word Of Galen; or his tedious recipes.— [RE-ENTER FACE.] ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... it—neither being less honest nor more honest. Those who sink below its standard are expelled; while those who rise above it are either pulled down to it or ruined. As, in self-defence, the civilised man becomes savage among savages; so, it seems that in self-defence, the scrupulous trader is obliged to become as little scrupulous as his competitors. It has been said that the law of the animal creation is—"Eat and be eaten;" and of our trading community it may be similarly said that its law is—Cheat and be cheated. A system ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... fire. On his right hand sat Father Con; on his left, Phaddhy himself, "to keep the-clargy company;" and, in due succession after them, their friends and neighbors, each taking precedence according to the most scrupulous notions of respectability. Beside Father Con sat "Pettier Malone," a "young collegian," who had been sent home from Maynooth to try his native air, for the recovery of his health, which was declining. He arrived only a few minutes after Father Philemy, and was a welcome reinforcement to Phaddhy, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... the most effectual purposes. He might be said to combine the powers of AEschylus and Aristophanes, of Dante and Rabelais, in his own mind. If he had been only half what he was, he would perhaps have appeared greater. The natural ease and indifference of his temper made him sometimes less scrupulous than he might have been. He is relaxed and careless in critical places; he is in earnest throughout only in Timon, Macbeth, and Lear. Again, he had no models of acknowledged excellence constantly in view to stimulate his efforts, and by all that appears, no love of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... situation to justify a charge of adultery, till I had, from conviction, shaken off the fetters which bound me to Mr. Venables.—While I lived with him, I defy the voice of calumny to sully what is termed the fair fame of woman.—Neglected by my husband, I never encouraged a lover; and preserved with scrupulous care, what is termed my honour, at the expence of my peace, till he, who should have been its guardian, laid traps to ensnare me. From that moment I believed myself, in the sight of heaven, free—and no power on earth shall force me to renounce ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... that score have already been condemned, and yet in his own person be a rigorist. And, in fact, it is notorious from St. Alfonso's Life, that he, who has the repute of being so lax a moralist, had one of the most scrupulous and anxious of consciences himself. Nay, further than this, he was originally in the Law, and on one occasion he was betrayed into the commission of what seemed like a deceit, though it was an accident; and that was the very occasion of his leaving the profession ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... species of loss which they had sustained years before, in houses, goods, stocks of cattle, fields with their crops and produce, woods with their timber, etc., etc. In such a proceeding the most unscrupulous would be likely to fare the best, and the most scrupulous and conscientious the worst; and it is alleged that many false losses were allowed to persons who had suffered no loss, while many other sufferers received no compensation, because they had not the means of bringing witnesses from America to ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... dressing-table, face downward," Miss Pugsley went on. "I had just done my hair for tea,—I am scrupulous in such matters,—and took up the glass to see that my pug was straight behind. I looked—and saw this. Ladies, I could have fainted on the floor. My nerves being what they are, it is a marvel that I ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards

... chance, give my poor father this ring and a lock of my hair, and say, Catharine died in endeavouring to save the blood of Bruce. And give this other lock to Henry; say, Catharine thought of him to the last, and that, if he has judged her too scrupulous touching the blood of others, he will then know it was not ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... up my mind to live single, so long as Julian's mother is alive. Legally, I am not bound; morally, I can scarcely feel myself free. And I know that you feel with me, Janet. The world may call us over-scrupulous; but I set your judgment higher than that of the world. And all I can say about Margaret is that I fell into a passing fit of madness, and cared for nothing but what my fancy dictated; and that now I am sane—clothed in my right mind, so to speak—I am disgusted with myself for my folly. ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... perils of the sea and trusted to luck in the great new world. The journey in itself was no small adventure. There were some sailings directly from Ireland; but most of the Irish immigrants were collected at Liverpool by agents not always scrupulous in their dealings. A hurried inspection at Liverpool gained them the required medical certificates, and they were packed into the ships. Of the voyage one passenger who made the journey from Belfast in 1795 said: "The slaves who are carried from the coast of Africa have much more room ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... ships in ballast; so that its deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors. Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese cap and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... of Boston, stimulated by the unanimity and scrupulous fidelity of New York, were impatient that a son of Barnard, two sons of Hutchinson, and about five others, would not accede to the agreement. At a great meeting of merchants in Faneuil Hall, Hancock proposed to send for Hutchinson's two sons, hinting, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... lucky-stone. The situation had become riskily sentimental and intensely stimulating to Burr's disposition as a social trifler. He was reckless of consequences, vain of conquest over any woman, and scrupulous only to avoid failure in his amours. The more innocent and virtuous the victim, the keener and more careful was he in pursuit. To entrap unsuspecting game without exciting alarm he considered the most exquisite art of gallantry. What sport it was to entangle this superb creature ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... indulgence for the Gypsies, that their wandering mode of life does not originate in any contumacious opposition to judicial order; but in a scrupulous regard to the Institutions of their ancestors. For the advantages we possess, shall we return injury to our fellow-men! If after being fully introduced into a situation to taste the comforts of social order, and to acquire a knowledge of mechanical ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... failures and within the limitations of general segregation policy, the Navy treated black officers with scrupulous fairness during the war. The Bureau of Naval Personnel insisted they be given the privileges of rank in wardroom and ashore, thus crushing an attempt by authorities at Great Lakes to underwrite a tacit ban ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... is seen in their scrupulous care against heresy, and is attested by the very complaint of their opponent Celsus. (Orig. Contr. Cels. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... the barbarian fleet doubled the Cape of Sunium, they reached their city, and effectually prevented the designs of the foe. Aristides, with the tribe under his command, was left on the field to guard the prisoners and the booty, and his scrupulous honesty was evinced by his jealous care over the scattered and uncounted treasure [290]. The painter of the nobler schools might find perhaps few subjects worthier of his art than Aristides watching at night amid the torches of his men over the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... (Gerard and Penfield) a sum of money to help Americans if I would set aside an equal sum to help their people here. The German fund that I thus began with was $50,000; the Austrian, $25,000. All this and more will be needed before the war ends.—All this activity is kept up with scrupulous attention to the British rules and regulations. In fact, we are helping this Government much in the management of these "alien ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... to accomplish itself, to be what it was; but, suppose the flight of the King without impediment, Robespierre escaping or Bonaparte assassinated—chances which depended upon an innkeeper proving less scrupulous, a door being left open, or a sentinel falling asleep—and the progress of the world would have taken a ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... he could not understand why, but supposing a scrupulous honesty in her, said: 'Yes, tell ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... efficient they must turn, and tack, and temporise, sometimes dissemble. They who are of the ruat coelum sort, who will carry everything their own way or not at all, must be content to yield their places to those who are certainly less scrupulous, and submit to the measures of those who are probably less wise. But though it is possible that the less rigid and austere politician may be equally virtuous and disinterested, the whole context of his life must be such as ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years since. There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been completely established; and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... was coming down backwards, which I took to be a mere girlish freak, or perhaps a piece of coquetry, practised on myself: but I afterwards found, that about the time the earth is at the full, the whole family pursued the same course, and were very scrupulous in making their steps in this awkward and inconvenient way, because it was one of the prescribed ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... of the army and the navy; promising the Parliament to save them a great deal of money, when we judge that it will cost the King more than if they had nothing to do with it, by reason of their delays and scrupulous enquirys into the account of both. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... hour beat scorchingly upon the dry grass, for there had been little rain during August and the vegetation had suffered severely; every growing thing was coated like a dusty miller. But within doors all looked most inviting. The room was scrupulous; its appointments indicated refined taste and constant care; the breakfast table, laid for two, was dainty and faultless in its appointments; our old friend, Jerome, moved about noiselessly, giving last lingering ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... direct and intentional an infringement of the treaties existing between the king of England and the sultan; committed, too, by the very individual appointed by the Porte to preside over their strict and scrupulous observance. The reis effendi now desired one of his officers to proceed with the English interpreter to the Bagnio, and cause the detained merchant to be given up; but the governor of the Bagnio refused to comply with the request, pretending that since the prisoner had been placed under his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... unlicensed intrusion, to suffer any one to induct himself into the corner of the left-hand pew nearest to the pulpit, which the Sergeant regularly occupied on Sundays. There he sat, his blue invalid uniform brushed with the most scrupulous accuracy. Two medals of merit displayed at his button-hole, as well as the empty sleeve which should have been occupied by his right arm, bore evidence of his hard and honourable service. His weatherbeaten features, his grey ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... to fifteen or sixteen inches in length and having completed four pounds in weight, rolling it into a lump which retained its shape by means of a rope one-fourth inch in diameter, tightly twisted around it. The labor in pressing and twisting is entirely done by hand, and attended to with the most scrupulous care. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... the word. It was not often so with her now. She had escaped the cholera. The remoteness of her house; her care never to enter the town; the purity of the water, which trickled always fresh from the cliff close by; and last, but not least, the scrupulous cleanliness which (to do her justice) she had always observed, and in which she had trained up Grace,—all these ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... the score of personal morality.[6] All were ungrammatical, rude in versification, crabbed and obscure in thought—the rough-hewn blockings-out of poems rather than finished works of art, as it appeared to the scrupulous, decorous, elegant, and timorous Academician of a feebler age. While pondering these difficulties, and comparing the readings of his many manuscripts, the thought occurred to Michelangelo that, between leaving the poems unpublished and printing them in ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... head of the Elamite king, whom Assurbanipal conquered and captured in his last campaign, hangs from a tree near the right[126] of the scene (see Figs. 27 and 28). The princes who took pleasure in these horrors were scrupulous in their piety. We find numberless representations of them in attitudes of profound respect before their gods, and sometimes they bring victims and libations in their hands (see Fig. 29). Thus, without any help from the inscriptions, we may divine from the sculptures alone what strange ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... indeed another objection, which in later times would have been of considerable weight—Gwenwyn was already married. But Brengwain was a childless bride; sovereigns (and among sovereigns the Welsh prince ranked himself) marry for lineage, and the Pope was not likely to be scrupulous, where the question was to oblige a prince who had assumed the Cross with such ready zeal, even although, in fact, his thoughts had been much more on the Garde Doloureuse than on Jerusalem. In the meanwhile, if Raymond Berenger ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... industrious husbandman, then, plant trees the fruit of which he shall never see? And shall not the great man found laws, institutions, and a republic? What does the procreation of children imply, and our care to continue our names, and our adoptions, and our scrupulous exactness in drawing up wills, and the inscriptions on monuments, and panegyrics, but that our thoughts run on futurity? There is no doubt but a judgment may be formed of nature in general, from looking at each nature ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... his wealth, and so soon as they were informed of the latter's death, they took all the legal steps necessary to secure the inheritance, and remitted large sums of money to the heir at regular intervals and with scrupulous exactness. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... warmth that poorly imitates the south, In a cold soil and an unfriendly clime. Call it what name you will—or education, Or principle, or artificial virtue Won from the heat of youth by art and cunning, In conflicts manifold—all noted down With scrupulous reckoning to that heaven's account, Which is its aim, and will requite its pains. Ask your own heart! Can she forgive the queen That you should scorn her dearly-purchased virtue, To pine in hopeless love ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Clement of Alexandria before the year 200. In time this rule gave rise to what is called the Disciplina arcani. Following the fashion of the pagan mysteries in which men were only permitted to gaze upon the sacred objects after minute lustrations and scrupulous purifications, Christian teachers came to represent the Creed, Lord's Prayer and Lord's Supper as mysteries to be guarded in silence and never divulged either to the unbaptized or to the pagans. And yet Justin Martyr, Tertullian and other apologists of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... developed an infallible gust and unerring relish of what was genuinely Johnsonian in speech, writing, or action; and his own account leads to the inference that he discarded, as worthless, masses of diverting material which would have tempted a less scrupulous writer beyond resistance. 'I observed to him,' said Boswell, 'that there were very few of his friends so accurate as that I could venture to put down in writing what they told me as his sayings.' The faithfulness ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... to be trusted in any degree with the preservation of the Establishment, who must, to be consistent with their principles, endeavour the subversion of what is established. An indulgence to consciences, which the prejudice of education and long habits have rendered scrupulous, may be agreeable to the rules of good policy and of humanity, yet will it hardly follow from hence that a government is under any obligation to indulge a tenderness of conscience to come, or to connive at the propagating of these prejudices and ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... general mass of information on the subject of an island still but imperfectly explored. To incorporate these new materials requiring that many liberties should be taken with the original contexture of the work, I became the less scrupulous of making further alterations wherever I thought they could be introduced with advantage. The branch of natural history in particular I trust will be found to have received much improvement, and I feel happy to have had it in my power to illustrate several of the more interesting productions ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... himself. I will not follow his example, nor shock my readers by transcribing the term in which he expressed his feeling as to the lady who had been named. The ravens and the last lingering notes of the clock bells were less scrupulous and repeated in correspondent echoes the very improper exclamation. The archdeacon again raised his hat, and another salutary escape of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... 'Agnes Grey' was accused of extravagant over-colouring in those very parts that were carefully copied from the life, with a most scrupulous avoidance of all exaggeration, so, in the present work, I find myself censured for depicting con amore, with 'a morbid love of the coarse, if not of the brutal,' those scenes which, I will venture ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... was an ambitious girl; she earnestly desired to secure a good position for herself in life. She hated her sister Carrie's ways, and detested the grumbling, weak sort of character which she could not but see that her mother possessed. All the same, she was not really scrupulous nor high-principled; it was only that the little mean ways and the petty shifts which went on in the small house in Constantine Road sorely fretted her. Her intercourse with girls like Gwin Harley and Bessie Challoner could not ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade

... will probably be grateful to the sentimentalists who, despite their scepticism, still cling to the name of Christian; but we imagine it will rather irritate than satisfy other readers of more strenuous and scrupulous intelligence. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... wonder then, in the heat of my youth, that he should have accepted my honour as security. But since I have marvelled not a little at this. The fine gentlemen at Brooks's with whom I had been associating were none too scrupulous, and regarded money-lenders as legitimate prey. Debts of honour they paid but tardily, if at all. A certain nobleman had been owing my Lord Carlisle thirteen thousand pounds for a couple of years, that his Lordship had won at hazard. And tho' I blush to write it, Mr. Fox himself was notorious ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... in the curve of the lip. The whole expression of the face was commanding, but sad. Often, as my experience of life increased, have I thought to trace upon that expressive visage the history of energetic ambition curbed by a fastidious philosophy and a scrupulous conscience; but then all that I could see was a vague, dissatisfied melancholy, which dejected ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... closer in his attendance on the House of Commons. During his first session in Parliament he was present at 128 out of 160 divisions; his second year in Parliament, though he was away ill for a month, was marked by a scarcely less scrupulous and regular attention to his duties, for he was present at 171 out of 264 divisions; and in his third session he was present at ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... representation ought to be so fixed, as to secure to the Atlantic States a prevalence in the national councils." "The new States," said he, "will know less of the public interest than these; will have an interest in many respects different; in particular will be little scrupulous of involving the community in wars, the burdens and operations of which would fall chiefly on the maritime States. Provision ought, therefore, to be made to prevent the maritime States from being hereafter ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... which I vow is a most pleasing one. Our typical legislator is of decent birth, or at least hopeful of acquiring what he rightly protests to be but 'the guinea stamp' by judiciously munificent contributions to his party's purse; honest and scrupulous in dealing; neither so honest nor so scrupulous in thinking; addicted to phrases and a trifle too impatient of their meaning, yet of proved carefulness in drawing the line between phrase and practice; a first-rate committeeman ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... I found only bare walls. No kind of 'servitus' (engagement), as to what I would use the building for, had been included in the agreement of purchase. In this matter I know of others who were no more scrupulous. I know of a convent at Maria-Eich,[30] where in place of the ancient altar stands the peasant-chimney, and here the Swabian, into whose hands this honorable antiquity passed, keeps his maize; why, in a town beside the Danube ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... and in the Protestant interest. A Protestant spirit had from the first animated every member of its body corporate. At the present moment, with all its toleration, all its liberality, all its comprehensiveness, and all its scrupulous honour, the genius loci, the guardian spirit of the place, was Protestant. And as a Protestant he said, and said it boldly, Protestant might it evermore remain." To this exposition of the spirit of the College two of its most distinguished ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... Another stairway reached from the terraces to the roof, the edge of which, all around the square, was defined by a sculptured cornice, and a parapet of burned-clay tiling, sexangular and bright red. In this quarter, moreover, there was everywhere observable a scrupulous neatness, which, allowing no dust in the angles, not even a yellow leaf upon a shrub, contributed quite as much as anything else to the delightful general effect; insomuch that a visitor, breathing the sweet air, knew, in advance of introduction, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... turned her head ere taking her place upon the couch, and perceived him in the act of taking flight, doubtless she would have remained for ever unconscious of the outrage done to her charms by a husband more passionate than scrupulous. ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... of luxury, of that clinging to the minute observance of personal seemliness, which showed what her other renunciations must have cost. There was no other token of her personality about the room, unless it showed itself in the scrupulous neatness of the scant articles of furniture: a washing-stand, two chairs, a small writing-desk, and the little table near the bed. On this table stood the empty bottle and glass, and from these ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... myself studying him critically. His appearance was without doubt distinguished. His sallow face, his pointed black beard, his high, well-shaped nose, and almost brilliant eyes gave him the appearance of a Spaniard; but the scrupulous exactness of his plain dinner clothes, his well-manicured nails, and the ring upon his little finger, with its wonderful green stone, were all suggestive of the French aristocrat. His eyebrows were knit just now, as though with thought. Presently ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... they approached the more crowded thoroughfares, the instinct of chivalrous protection was keen in his breast. He piloted her skillfully; he jauntily suited his own to her skipping step; he lifted her with scrupulous politeness over obstacles; strutting beside her on crowded pavements, he made way for her with his swinging stick. All the while, too, he had taken note of the easy carriage of her head and shoulders, and most of all of her small, slim feet and hands, that, to his fastidious taste, betokened ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... style. He has contributed some immortal characters to English fiction, including Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. His great faults as a writer are affectation and a peculiarly deliberate kind of indecency, which his profession renders all the more offensive; and he was by no means scrupulous in adopting, without acknowledgment, the good ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... Ingleborough, "and those were beautiful rifles too. But look here: I could see a way out of the difficulty, only you are so scrupulous. One ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... the raised earth of which was held in place by a low privet hedge. A few monthly roses, pinkes, lilies, and Spanish broom filled this bed, around which in the summer season boxes of paurestinus, pomegranates, and myrtle were placed. Struck by the scrupulous cleanliness of the courtyard and its dependencies, a stranger would at once have divined that the place belonged to an old maid. The eye which presided there must have been an unoccupied, ferreting eye; minutely careful, less from nature than for want of something ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... office, have become an obsession and they shadow our days. So insistent and incessant are the demands, so artificial and unreal the issues, so barren of vital results all this pandemonium of partisanship and change, the more intelligent and scrupulous are losing interest in the whole affair, and while they increasingly withdraw to matters of a greater degree of reality those who subsist on the proceeds gain the power, and hold it. At the very moment when the women of the United ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... mind in the strongest conceivable form. No man who knows what Livingstone was will imagine for a moment that he had not the most tender regard for the health, the comfort, and the feelings of his wife; in matters of delicacy he had the most scrupulous regard to propriety; his resolution to take her with him must, therefore, have sprung from something far stronger than even his affection for her. What was ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... certainly occurred. But for the most part wars were the concern of the privileged upper class; they were rendered necessary by the dynastic quarrels of monarchs and were carried out by a professional class with aristocratic traditions and a more or less scrupulous regard to ancient military etiquette. There are many stories of the sufferings of the soldiery in old times, in the midst of abundance, on account of military respect for civilian property. Von der Goltz remarks that "there was a time when the troops camped in the cornfields and yet starved," ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... amazed at the spiritual instinct of this Puritan child, who ranged her motives so unerringly; dismissing this as of self, marking this as of God's inspiration, accepting this and rejecting that element of the circumstances of her life; steering confidently between the shoals of scrupulous judgment and conscience on the one side, and the hidden rocks of presumption and despair on the other—these very dangers that had baffled and perplexed her so long—and tracing out through them all the clear deep safe channel of God's intention, who had allowed her to emerge ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... constitutional provision against the introduction of Slaves. They had scruples against admitting the term "Slaves" into the Instrument. Hence the descriptive phrase "migration or importation of persons"; the term migration allowing those who were scrupulous of acknowledging expressly a property in human beings, to view imported persons as a species of emigrants, whilst others might apply the term to foreign malefactors sent or coming into the country. It is possible tho' not recollected, that some might have had an eye to the case of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... bound to lay upon their children, and the latter to submit to; and among other things, I am sure a defined method and regular habits in education, work, and play, together, with a most strict attention to scrupulous punctuality, are not only valuable but indispensable to a right government of the mind and conduct in after- life. I have daily cause to lament the unavoidable neglect of such a system in my own case, during three important years; ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... Your own grasp, individual sense of fingering and tact will dictate the management of technics. Von Bulow gives a very sensible pattern to work from, and Kullak is still more explicit. He analyzes the melody and, planning the arpeggiating with scrupulous fidelity, he shows why the arpeggiating "must be affected with the utmost rapidity, bordering upon simultaneousness of harmony in the case of many chords." Kullak has something to say about the grace notes and this bids me call your attention ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... comrade on the boulevard, some unlucky devil like himself—there are so many of them in that sacred profession!—whom he entertained at a restaurant or cafe. Then, with scrupulous fidelity—and very grateful they were to him—he would carry the rest of the money home, sometimes with a bouquet for his wife or a little present for Desiree, a nothing, a mere trifle. What would you have? Those are the customs of the stage. It is such a simple matter in a melodrama ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... it seems that in England (cf. Times, January, 1917) some have made a scrupulous distinction between the use of this ointment before and after, and have forbidden the former while approving the latter, you need make no such distinction (of course, supposing the ointment is not used by a woman to sterilize). It is not ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout

... boot, being an accessory, both before and after the fact, to a most gross and scandalous act of sacrilegious and burglarious robbery. And an amusing sequel to the story proves that, where relics were concerned, his friend Hildoin, another high ecclesiastical dignitary, was even less scrupulous ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... as an original investigator in astronomy, a lecturer and writer on the subject, and an instructor of college classes, and his scrupulous care in preparing this volume, led the publishers to present the work with the highest confidence; and this confidence has been fully justified by the event. More than one hundred colleges adopted the work within a year ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell

... the princess was in the Tower, sent a secret writ, signed by a few of the council, for her private execution, and, had Mr. Bridges, lieutenant of the Tower, been as little scrupulous of dark assassination as this pious prelate was, she must have perished. The warrant not having the queen's signature, Mr. Bridges hastened to her majesty, to give her information of it, and to know her mind. This was a plot of Winchester's, who, to convict ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... anxieties and sadness, in the concern which she felt for this unfortunate and extraordinary young man. She wished much to devise some means for drawing him from a life of such hardship and obscurity; but what to a man thus "jealous in honour," thus scrupulous in delicacy, could she propose, without more risk of offence, than probability of obliging? His account had, indeed, convinced her how much he stood in need of assistance, but it had shewn her no less how fastidious he ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... of what may be called the mechanics of Blake's poetry are not—important as they are—the only justification for a scrupulous adherence to his autograph text. Blake's use of language was not guided by the ordinarily accepted rules of writing; he allowed himself to be trammelled neither by prosody nor by grammar; he wrote, with an extraordinary audacity, according to the mysterious dictates of his own strange ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... very good judge of sewing, my dear little girl," said Mr. Gresham, examining the work with a close and scrupulous eye; "but in my opinion, here is one stitch that is rather too long; the white teeth ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... was at times merely tepid; in short, it seemed as if she really ought to be discharged; but then there was invariably some reason for postponing the fatal hour. Either her kindness to the children or a week or two of the old-time efficiency, her unyielding civility, her scrupulous honesty, her willing acquiescence in any new duty imposed, an impression that she was suffering, any one or all of these reasons kept her on in her place until she became so much a fixture in the household, so much one of the family, that the idea of getting ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... sorrow have their advantages; the law of compensation, you see. Poets, according to Shelley, learn in suffering what they teach in song. And if novelists were always scrupulous, what do you think they would write? Only milk-and-water proprieties, tamely-virtuous platitudes. Do you think Dickens never saw a taproom or a thief's den?—or that Thackeray is unacquainted with the "Cave of Harmony"? No,—all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... quite new," "the latest style," followed it in its passage round the room, and indicated to Clarence its whereabouts. It was presently handed back to the barkeeper, who had begged also to inspect it, and who, with an air of scrupulous ceremony insisted upon placing it himself in Clarence's side pocket, as if it were an important part of his function. The driver here called "all aboard." The passengers hurriedly reseated themselves, and the episode abruptly ended. For, to Clarence's surprise, these attentive friends of a moment ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte

... otherwise dispose of it as he would of his watch or his coat. Candidates are admitted by ballot and with great care, the object being to secure the exclusion of all but men of known integrity, for the Board requires the most scrupulous good faith in the transactions of all its members. Four black balls will prevent the admission of a candidate whether he wishes to enter by purchase or otherwise. Candidates must submit to a close scrutiny of their previous lives, and must show a ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... Soon after his inauguration he wrote to Rutledge: "I anticipate that one of the most difficult and delicate parts of the duty of any office will be that which relates to nominations for appointments." And he was most scrupulous and painstaking in his appointments. Fitness for duty was paramount with him, though he recognized geographical necessity and distributed the offices with that precision which characterized all ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... dismissed Vanel, than he began to reflect for a few moments: "A man never can do too much for the woman he has once loved. Marguerite wishes to be the wife of a procureur-general—and why not confer this pleasure upon her? And now that the most scrupulous and sensitive conscience will be unable to reproach me with anything, let my thoughts be bestowed on her who has shown so much devotion for me. Madame de Belliere ought to be there by this time," he said, as he ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... and stitched from breakfast to dinner with scrupulous regularity. But the dinners of that time were early; and the afternoon was her own. Though she had given up novel-writing, she was still fond of using her pen. She began to keep a diary, and she corresponded largely with a person who seems to have had the chief share ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... the division into summers and winters, into which all campaigns naturally fall; and the work breaks off abruptly in the middle of the 21st year of the war (B.C. 411). The materials of Thucydides were collected with the most scrupulous care; the events are related with the strictest impartiality; and the work probably offers a more exact account of a long and eventful period than any other contemporary history, whether ancient or modern, ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... Toombs with other Georgians did come forward and lift the pressure. Sometimes he talked in a random way, but responsibility always sobered him. He was impatient of fraud and stupidity, often full of exaggerations, but scrupulous when the truth was relevant. Always strict and honorable in his engagements, he boasted that he never had a ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... over-scrupulous perhaps, he had always taken what he pleased to call long chances, and it was in almost imperceptible gradations that he had descended in the scale of honesty to the point that had at last made possible these forgeries. Until now he had always felt certain ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... circumstance caused the French to continue their impositions upon the English, their having been duped by the latter, and in many instances to a considerable amount, as amongst the crowds who came over, were many persons who were not very scrupulous with respect to paying their debts, to whom the French willingly gave credit, the English name at that period having stood extremely high in the estimation of the French, but having sustained several losses on account of their too great ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... mischief still for idle hands to do. You see that I am in a mood to quote to-night. But on the whole you are not what the world calls a bad fellow. On the contrary, I am. And that being the case, and as I am not supposed to be in the least scrupulous in my methods, it stands to reason that I am likely to get the better of you. Now you are a man of honour, and if you give your word it is as good as your bond. Give me your word that not one suggestion of what has taken place here to-night shall be ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... wearing a sun-helmet, and, as the fashion is amongst the Europeans in Calcutta, his syce carried a silk hat for Shere Ali to take in exchange for his helmet when the sun went down. Shere Ali, like most of the Europeanised Indians, was more scrupulous than any Englishman in adhering to the European custom. But to-day, with an angry ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... senseless. That was Loring's last affair of the kind. He went about his duties next day as seriously and methodically as ever, without the faintest show of triumph, and when the vanquished cadet finally returned from hospital, treated him with scrupulous courtesy that, before the winter wore away, warmed even to kindliness, and when the springtime came the two were cordial friends. The summer of his graduation Loring was ordered on temporary duty as an instructor during the encampment of cadets. He did not dance. He cared ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... like an ague. What next would he do? Of what wild extravagance was he not capable? He was a queer mixture of fire and ice, of sensuality and self-restraint. She knew him to be utterly lawless in most things, and yet toward her he had shown scrupulous restraint. What possibilities were in a man of his electric temperament, who had the strength to throttle his ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... already on their way towards the genial warmth of the flames. Then he stopped short. He stood perfectly still in an attitude of arrested motion, his eyes, wonderingly at first, and then with a strange, unanalysable expression, seeming to embark upon a lengthened, a scrupulous, an almost horrified estimate of ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the smuggling dogs on the frontiers of France, are well known, but these smugglers are now almost all destroyed. The extent to which this illicit commerce was carried, was enormous. Dogs notions of property, however, are often very scrupulous; a lady at Bath found her way impeded as she walked by a dog, who had discovered the loss of her veil, though she had not; the animal had left his own master to seek it for her; he found it, and then returned to his owner. They often shew a presentiment of danger, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... sensitive delicacy. This is the teacher's business. He must not be indifferent to it. He has no right to neglect it. He can not transfer it to another. He, and he only, is responsible.[71] It is impossible to be over-scrupulous in this matter. And the committee should see that the teacher does his duty; otherwise all his lessons in duty are of no avail, and the school, instead of being a source of purity, delicacy, and refinement, becomes a fountain of corruption, throwing ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... it, no doubt. He had not liked to say of the simple girl whom Grail was to marry that she was very beautiful. Annabel felt that most men would have been less scrupulous: it was characteristic of Egremont to feel a subtle propriety of ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... manners of its people, of their character, of their habits. We desired to sketch the home life of the people in the higher and lower classes, to depict their language, their faith, their traditions, their legends. What we have sought above all is to paint after nature, and with the most scrupulous exactitude, the objects and persons brought forward. Therefore our readers will seek in vain amid our actors for accomplished heroes or consummate villains, such as are found in the romances of chivalry or in melodramas. Our ambition has been to give as true an idea as possible ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... the hunting life; guarded, by exact observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country, against losing time in the description of objects already possessed; honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding, and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous, that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves; with all these qualifications, as if selected and implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him. To fill up the measure desired, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... would have been more portable. This precaution became indispensable however with respect to two of the casks, that had suffered too much from the violent shaking on the road to be embarked in that condition, and although all the casks are double, I apprehend the most scrupulous care will be necessary in their debarcation and removal. I send herewith the Chevalier de l'Angle's receipt for the specie on board the frigate Resolve, the copy of the Treasurer's note at Brest, and invoices of the cargoes on board the Cibelle and the Olimpe. Besides these, the whole of the surgical ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... pleased with both these answers of Le Fort—the one showing his scrupulous fidelity to his engagements in not being willing to leave one service for another, however advantageous to himself the change might be, until he was honorably released by his first employer, and the other marking the delicacy of mind which prompted him to wish not to take any part in the conversation ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... from which Jasper obtained his claim to be considered a sailor. She was cutter-rigged, might have been of forty tons burthen, was so neatly constructed and painted as to have something of the air of a vessel of war, though entirely without quarters, and rigged and sparred with so scrupulous a regard to proportions and beauty, as well as fitness and judgment, as to give her an appearance that even Mabel at once distinguished to be gallant and trim. Her mould was admirable, for a wright of great skill had sent her drafts from England, at the express ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... her—Burwood, the lonely house in the lonely valley, of which Catherine was the presiding genius. Catherine! For Rose, what a multitude of associations clustered round the name! To her it meant everything at this moment against which her soul rebelled—the most scrupulous order, the most rigid self-repression, the most determined sacrificing of 'this warm kind world,' with all its indefensible delights, to a cold other-world with its torturing inadmissible claims. Even in the midst of her stolen joys at Manchester or London, this mere ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... judges of the land. The Americans seem, on the contrary, to have increased by this means that respect which is due to the authorities, and at the same time to have rendered those who are in power more scrupulous of offending public opinion. I was struck by the small number of political trials which occur in the United States; but I have no difficulty in accounting for this circumstance. A lawsuit, of whatever nature it may be, is always a difficult ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... our genius. This we may perceive in individuals as well as in the broader aspects of arts and literatures. The classically minded man, the reader of Latin poets, the lover of brilliant conversation, the frequenter of clubs and drawing-rooms, nice in his personal requirements, scrupulous in his choice of words, averse to unnecessary physical exertion, preferring town to country life, cannot deeply feel the charm of the Alps. Such a man will dislike German art, and however much he may strive to be Catholic ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... to insist. Devoted as Kate was to Mr. Middleton, and attached, in an apologetic, shame-faced way, to her mistress, overworked and unpaid, save for the sums Elsie forced upon her, how could she demand that Kate be more scrupulous about details? It would seem that she had all she could carry ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... me, for it seemed to me less scrupulous and seeking only to be amused that one who had done so much in a short time might well be counted upon to do more. I hid in the arcade, and I saw how Dante went straight to the seat where he had left his book, and found it still lying there, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... that the very primary and essential prerequisite of happiness was wanting to the union. Coleridge, he says, assured him that his marriage was "not his own deliberate act, but was in a manner forced upon his sense of honour by the scrupulous Southey, who insisted that he had gone too far in his attentions to Miss Fricker for any honourable retreat." On the other hand, he adds, "a neutral spectator of the parties protested to me that ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... purpose. It was a slender wand about three feet long with three globes made of thin strips of wood hanging by a strip of o['k]linok from the smaller end. It was carried by the messenger between the men and women during the feast, and was the visible sign of his authority. It was treated with scrupulous respect by the Eskimo and to disregard the wishes conveyed by means of it during the feast would have been considered a lasting disgrace. When not in use it was hung over the entrance ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... he found Evelyn in tears. But with his scrupulous tact he avoided any allusion to her grief, and while she bathed her eyes she thanked him in her heart for this. Her father would have fretted and fussed and maddened her with questions, but Owen cheered her with sanguine ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... a foreign nation, the United States may rightfully stipulate that the Congress will or will not exercise its legislative power in some particular manner, on some particular subject. Such promises, when made, should be voluntarily kept, with the most scrupulous good faith. But that a treaty with a foreign nation can deprive the Congress of any part of the legislative power conferred by the people, so that it no longer can legislate as it was empowered by the Constitution to ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... defeated if she remains with it, as her tracks can not be concealed. She therefore hides her fawn in the grass, where it is almost impossible to see it, even when very near it, goes off to some neighboring thicket within call, and makes her bed alone. The Indian pot-hunter, who is but little scrupulous as to the means he employs in accomplishing his ends, sounds the bleat along near the places where he thinks the game is lying, and the unsuspicious doe, who imagines that her offspring is in distress, rushes with headlong impetuosity toward the sound, and often goes within a few yards ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... dofunnies on the cupolas. Of course not. Angel cake is her limit! And that's the way with those lovely liquids and things on your pretty spindle-legged dressing table. They can do a good deal in the beautifying line, but they can't do everything. Give them the help of perfect health and scrupulous cleanliness of the skin, and lo! what ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... hitherto borne himself between the contending parties in the state with scrupulous fairness to both. Though, he had, probably, been taken by surprise by the sweeping character of the changes his ministers had proposed, he had given them a frank support, consenting, even at a moment's notice, to dissolve the Parliament after ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... the system of Weston had hardly seemed government at all. In the correspondence which passed between the two ministers the king was censured as over-cautious, the Star Chamber as feeble, the judges as over-scrupulous. "I am for Thorough," the one writes to the other in alternate fits of impatience at the slow progress they are making. Wentworth was anxious that his good work might not "be spoiled on that side." Laud echoed the wish, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... appearance. Those who are slovenly or careless in their habits are unfit for refined society, and cannot possibly make a good appearance in it. A well-bred person will always cultivate habits of the most scrupulous neatness. A gentleman or lady is always well dressed. The garment may be plain or of coarse material, or even worn "thin and shiny," but if it is carefully brushed and neat it can be worn ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... railroad officials. While the men who manage large railroad interests do not always possess that wisdom which popular reverence attributes to them, they certainly possess great cunning, and expend much of their artfulness in efforts to win over scrupulous, and to render still more servile unscrupulous executives. The general railroad diplomate never omits to pay homage to the man in power, to flatter him, to impress him with the political influence of his company, to intimate plainly that, as it has been ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... Agapida here indulges in a long eulogy on the scrupulous discrimination of the Castilian court in the distribution of its honors and rewards, by which means every smile and gesture and word of the sovereigns had its certain value and conveyed its equivalent of joy to ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... public interest and notoriety: this hereditary honour conferring not personal dignity merely, but important privileges, and being almost always identified with great wealth and influence. The records relating to it are kept with the most scrupulous attention, not only by heirs and expectants, but they are appealed to by more distant connections, as conferring distinction on all who can claim such affinity. Hence there are few disputes concerning successions to this rank, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... age, certainly, for scrupulous spirits to move in! A perplexed network of partizan or personal interests underlay, and furnished the really directing forces in, a supposed Armageddon of contending religious convictions. The wisest perhaps, like Michel de L'Hopital, withdrew themselves from a conflict, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... about diet is being over scrupulous, and is converting moderation into a fault; but on the other hand it is little better than gluttony, if we cannot refrain from what may by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various

... the excessively minute attention to ritual, and the comparatively subordinate part played by ethical considerations in this priestly manual, it is only fair to remember that the hymn-book used by these scrupulous ministers of worship was the Psalter-enough surely to show that the ethical and spiritual aspects of religion, though not prominent, were very far from being forgotten. In xvii.-xxvi. the ethical element receives a fine and almost surprising prominence: ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... may be made three very grave objections, by incredulous interested priests, ambitious citizens, and scrupulous statesmen. The stocking manufactory gentlemen don't know how swearing can bring 'em to any probability of covering their legs anew, unless it be by the means of a pair of stocks: That the hemp-snared men apprehend, that such an encouragement ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... this envelope when Sir William Hamilton inferred its existence. He asked Dr. Lloyd to test experimentally the truth of his theoretic conclusion. Lloyd, taking a crystal of arragonite, and following with the most scrupulous exactness the indications of theory, cutting the crystal where theory said it ought to be cut, observing it where theory said it ought to be observed, discovered the luminous envelope which had previously been a mere idea in the mind of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... past when ignorance could maintain that these remains of organised bodies resulted from the caprice of Nature, and were productions formed in the bosom of the earth by its generative powers; for a scrupulous comparison of the remains shows not the slightest difference between the fossil shells and those that are now found in the ocean. It is clear, then, that they inhabited the sea, and that they were deposited by the sea in the places where they are now ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various



Words linked to "Scrupulous" :   scruple, religious, principled, careful, conscientious, scrupulousness, painstaking, unscrupulous



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com