overscrupulous

"overscrupulous" indicates that there are different levels of scruples.

South Dakota Politics 2009

One could say that Dixon proceeds through a kind of expository shorthand -- "Rings twice more and stops" -- that while "attached" to the character as a frame of reference is otherwise a way of dispensing with the overscrupulous explication of consciousness that so often and so tediously passes for "psychological realism" in contemporary literary fiction.

Narrative Strategies 2009

He, of course, for awhile tried his band at persuading Mr. Harding that he was foolish, overscrupulous, self-willed, and weak-minded, but he tried in vain.

Barchester Towers 2004

In times like these… it will not do to be overscrupulous.

Alexander Hamilton, American Richard Brookhiser 1999

In times like these… it will not do to be overscrupulous.

Alexander Hamilton, American Richard Brookhiser 1999

That is what gave him the reputation of being not altogether a man of honor, capable of letting people down, capable, with an easy smile and a laugh, of transforming one policy into another, and not really being overscrupulous about whom he happened to drown in the process.

On JFK: An Interview with Isaiah Berlin Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. 1998

It had seemed to him, during those dreadful days, that although some instinct within him forbade him to end his own life, none could doubt his right to alleviate his mental suffering by any means he knew; and when temporary oblivion, a blessed forgetfulness, could be purchased at the price of a pinprick, it seemed not only overscrupulous but foolish to forgo that

Afterwards Kathlyn Rhodes

It was as if an overscrupulous remembrance of hard days forced him to disclaim kinship with anything so finely feminine as Constantia Wyatt; as if he found no right of way from his own world of concrete fact into that delicate gracious world of illusions in which he placed her.

Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker Marguerite Bryant

The gentleman whom our hero was questioning was a lawyer, a very shrewd man, who had the reputation of not being overscrupulous, but there were reasons why he desired to oblige our hero, and after a moment he said:

A Successful Shadow A Detective's Successful Quest Harlan Page Halsey

Mary was almost overscrupulous about not allowing them to disturb the two, who were supposed to be giving all their time and effort to language study.

Have We No Rights? A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries Mabel Williamson