You had no right to be born for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength.

The speaker delivers a severe rebuke of self-abnegation and emotional parasitism: to “make no use of life” is to refuse one’s responsibility to live as an autonomous moral agent. The contrast between living “for, in, and with yourself” and “fasten[ing] your feebleness on some other person’s strength” frames dependence as an ethical failure, not merely a personal weakness. In Brontë’s fiction, such language often accompanies moments when a character insists on self-respect, self-governance, and the dignity of inner resources over clinging attachment. The quote’s force lies in its insistence that love or companionship cannot substitute for self-possession; to demand another’s strength as a crutch is to misuse both life and relationship.