Quote 1
"Dorian Gray is my dearest friend," he said. "He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite right in what she said of him. Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him. Mind, Harry, I trust you." He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against his will.
"What nonsense you talk!" said Lord Henry, smiling, and taking Hallward by the arm, he almost led him into the house. (1.24-25)
And the battle begins. Basil, sadly, is fully aware of what Henry is capable of – he's worried from the very beginning that Henry will turn his young friend from good to evil.
Quote 2
"You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized." (1.17)
Here, Basil self-deprecatingly admits that even artists have to give in to the demands of society at times – they (who usually inhabit their own creative worlds) have to pretend to be "civilized" on occasion.
Quote 3
"An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty." (1.21)
Basil highlights exactly what's wrong with the contemporary art scene as he sees it. He thinks that art should be about beauty, not the artist's ego.
Quote 4
"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," said Basil Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. "I believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose."
"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know," cried Lord Henry, laughing. (1.11-12)
Here's the difference between Basil and Henry, in a nutshell – Basil believes that people are innately (perhaps secretly) good, and that his friend's cynicism is just a front. Henry, on the other hand, is more suspicious – especially of people who pretend to be totally upfront all the time.
Quote 5
The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. "I shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly.
"Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, strolling across to him. "Am I really like that?"
"Yes; you are just like that."
"How wonderful, Basil!"
"At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter," sighed Hallward. "That is something." (2.34)
Huh…Basil's wistful comment hits closer to home than he can possibly realize at this stage. The portrait is the real Dorian – more real than its artist can even conceive of. So real, in fact, that it has to alter eventually…
Quote 6
"Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed you completely. You look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come down to my studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple, natural, and affectionate then. You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole world. Now, I don't know what has come over you. You talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry's influence. I see that."
The lad flushed up and, going to the window, looked out for a few moments on the green, flickering, sun-lashed garden. "I owe a great deal to Harry, Basil," he said at last, "more than I owe to you. You only taught me to be vain."
"Well, I am punished for that, Dorian -- or shall be some day." (9.2-3)
This cold exchange between Basil and Dorian expresses the danger in mistaking outer beauty for inner beauty. Poor Basil is just realizing that the Dorian before him really is totally different from the Dorian he captured in paint. There's an interestingly prescient note in his declaration that he is or will be "punished" for showing Dorian his own beauty – he tragically doesn't know how true these words will be.
Quote 7
"[…] the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way -- I wonder will you understand me? -- his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before. 'A dream of form in days of thought' -- who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad -- for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty -- his merely visible presence -- ah! I wonder can you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body -- how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me!" (1.20)
Dorian brings about a dramatic transformation in Basil's artwork – his personality is the catalyst to Basil's new understanding of the world. Basil's personal development is exactly in line with his artistic development. Everything, to him, is art.
Quote 8
A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older. (6.10)
Basil recognizes the changes that have come over Dorian before things even really start happening. He's incredibly sensitive to any difference in the object of his idolatry.
Quote 9
An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray's own face that he was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble curves had not yet completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brush-work, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion.
It was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire. He had never done that. Still, it was his own picture. He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own picture! What did it mean? Why had it altered? (13.5-6)
Finally, Basil comes face to painted face with Dorian's real soul, and, finally, he sees what he's been denying all along. His horror and shock are those of betrayal; he'd believed in Dorian all these years, only to find that all the rumors are true – Dorian has become a monster.
Quote 10
"Don't speak. Wait till you hear what I have to say. Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away from me, you were still present in my art.... Of course, I never let you know anything about this. It would have been impossible. You would not have understood it. I hardly understood it myself. I only knew that I had seen perfection face to face, and that the world bad become wonderful to my eyes -- too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them…" (9.11)
Basil's obsessive idolatry of Dorian has the desperate quality of unrequited love – his jealousy, "worship," and adoration all speak of feelings that extend beyond mere friendship.