War and Peace; The Sociopathic Personality

As might be expected, this immensely long novel has a diverse cast of characters. Speaking of one of the bad guys, Anatole Kuragin, Tolstoy provides us with an excellent description of a sociopathic personality.

“Anatole was . . . instinctively and thoroughly convinced that he could not live except just in the way he did live, and that he had never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of considering either how his actions might be judged by others, or what might be the result of this or that action on his part. . . he was incapable of considering the effect upon others of the gratification of his tastes, he believed himself in his heart to be an irreproachable man. . .”
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* Constance Garnett translation