Quote 31
Mind you, I don't believe these rumours at all. At least, I can't believe them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even. (12.8)
Yet again, Dorian's appearance of youthful innocence keeps him out of trouble with gullible Basil – the painter can't conceive of a world in which people's sins aren't plain to see on their faces. Dorian's continuing outer beauty convinces him of his friend's continuing inner beauty.
Quote 32
Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood -- his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it. He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own, it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him? (20.3)
In his moment of crisis, Dorian looks back on his long-gone days of innocence – he finally comes to terms with the havoc he's wreaked on the lives of others. But is this enough to save him? Can we ever erase the stains of sin from our souls?
Quote 33
But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with its marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal. (11.14)
Dorian's personal moral code can't be attributed to any other source – he believes only in his own experience of life, not in any theories or principles, like his mentor, Lord Henry. The codes and rules that apply to other men just don't seem to stick with him.