It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 20. This passage speaks to Dorian’s vanity and obsession with appearances. Hating his own beauty, he takes up the carved mirror that Lord Henry gave him and smashes it into pieces on the floor. It was his beauty and prayer to remain young that ruined and corrupted him, he admits. He realizes that his beauty was a "mask" behind which the real Dorian hid and his youth was just an illusion.