“Hear the truth, therefore, now, while you are unprejudiced. [He] is a man without heart or conscience; a designing, wary, cold-blooded being, who thinks only of himself; who, for his own interest or ease, would be guilty of any cruelty, or any treachery, that could be perpetrated without risk of his general character. He has no feeling for others. Those whom he has been the chief cause of leading into ruin, he can neglect and desert without the smallest compunction. He is totally beyond the reach of any sentiment of justice, of compassion. Oh! he is black at heart, hollow and black!”
It’s not as if I actively search my books for character descriptions like this one. No, I just find them within whatever it is I’m reading.
In this case, it’s Jane Austen’s 1815 novel, her last and my favorite — Persuasion.