Quote 10
"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate."
"Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something of both. It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together." (19.2)
If "civilization" is truly what Lord Henry thinks it is, we're not sure we want it. He thinks that it springs either from "culture" or "corruption" – or from a combination of the two. The thing is, we have to wonder how separable these two things are.
Quote 11
"The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets." (19.9)
Lord Henry's observation is an apt one – Dorian's life is indeed his art. Little does he know how true his casual comment is. And if he could see what "art" really did come of Dorian's life, would he still think it praiseworthy?
Quote 12
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame -- "
"Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what to say. (2.8)
Lord Henry suggests that even Dorian's pure, innocent young life is secretly full of hidden, shameful desires. That is to say, even Dorian isn't truly innocent.