Realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing…A new Hedonism – that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Lord Henry targets Dorian with the aim of making him the symbol of his "new Hedonism." Pleading with Dorian to make the most of his youth, he uses a metaphor to urge him him spend the "gold" of his days by living a wonderful life to the full and enjoying new sensations.