Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them… They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things… Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
Right after Henry’s monologue, the novel shows language working on Dorian’s nerves. The hammering “Words! Mere words!” admits their power while pretending to diminish them. This is the hinge where rhetoric begins to rewire a personality. “Plastic form to formless things” is a brilliant phrase: ideas can sculpt craving. The repetition enacts hypnosis; we feel Dorian being impressed like soft wax. Wilde makes language itself a character—tempter and tool. It speaks to any reader who has felt shifted by a sentence.