Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Scrupulosity

It will be necessary to avoid the exquisiteness of an over-attention to small parts; and to over-precision, and to a spirit of detail, which acute understandings, and which, without great care, all precise reasoners are apt to get into; and which gives, in some degree, a sort of hardness, and what you connoisseurs call the dry manner, to all our actions.

Groundless prejudices and weaknesses of conscience, instead of tenderness, mislead too many others, too many, otherwise good men.

For the matter of your confession, let it be severe and serious; but yet so that it may be without any inordinate anxiety, and unnecessary scruples, which only entangle the soul.