If these sketches should prove the means of deterring one family from sinking their property, and Shipwrecking all their hopes, by going to reside in the backwoods of Canada, I shall consider myself amply repaid for revealing the secrets of the prison-house, and feel that I have not toiled and suffered in the wilderness in vain.
"Roughing it in the Bush"
Susanna Moodie
Their ideas, their desires, their intentions, their plans, are excellent; but the passage between the brain and the canvas, between the brain and the sheet of paper, is full of Shipwrecking reefs, and the intentions of these men do not correspond in the least with their execution.
"Modern Painting"
George Moore
Though all this was very dear to me I did not fall in love: but he who escapes a woman's dominion generally comes under the sway of some friend who ever exerts a strange attractiveness, and fosters a sort of dependency that is not healthful or valid: and although I look back with undiminished delight on the friendship I contracted about this time-a friendship which permeated and added to my life-I am nevertheless forced to recognise that, however suitable it may have been in my special case, in the majority of instances it would have proved but a Shipwrecking reef, on which a young man's life would have gone to pieces.
"Confessions of a Young Man"
George Moore