"A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development."
Agnes Repplier was an American essayist and biographer. She was known for literary criticism and reflective essays published in major periodicals. Her work was widely read in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.