For it bound us all together, hand in hand; it taught us endurance, self-dependence, and, best of all lessons, self-renunciation.

I think, one's whole after-life is made easier and more blessed by having known what it was to be very poor when one was young.
Our fortunes were rising now, and any little pleasure did not take near so much contrivance.

We found we could manage the Longfield visit--ay, and a horse for John to ride to and fro--without any worse sacrifice than that of leaving Jenny--now Mrs.Jem Watkins, but our cook still--in the house at Norton Bury, and doing with one servant instead of two.

Also, though this was not publicly known till afterwards, by the mother's renouncing a long-promised silk dress--the only one since her marriage, in which she had determined to astonish John by choosing the same colour as that identical grey gown he had seen hanging up in the kitchen at Enderley.
"But one would give up anything," she said, "that the children might have such a treat, and that father might have rides backwards and forwards through green lanes all summer.

Oh, how I wish we could always live in the country!" "Do you ?" And John looked--much as he had looked at long-tailed grey ponies in his bridegroom days--longing to give her every thing she desired.