"I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don’t want to see Dorian tied to some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect."
"Oh, she is better than good – she is beautiful," murmured Lord Henry, sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. "Dorian says she is beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. Your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, amongst others."
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 6. Basil hopes that the girl Dorian is engaged to be married to is good. However, Henry dismisses the importance of goodness, saying that beauty is far better and she has that. Basil’s portrait has made Dorian appreciate even more the appearance of other people, he tells the artist. Henry’s promotion of the aesthetic philosophy reflects the conflict in the novel between aestheticism and morality. In a letter to St. James’s Gazette responding to a complaint that the novel had no moral, Wilde wrote: "The poor public, hearing, from an authority so high as your own, that this is a wicked book that should be coerced and suppressed by a Tory Government, will, no doubt, rush to it and read it. But, alas! they will find that it is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."