Seeing the Good in All Situations: The Proverb ‘Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining’

The expression ’silver lining’ has been around for centuries.

Even when the skies seem bleak and cloudy, the sun is always just on the other side. Karatpet thongngam/Shutterstock

When I was a teenager, my siblings and I would sometimes vent to each other. Sound familiar? We liked to complain about people who, at times, made life a little less pleasant. Normally, one might feel a sense of satisfaction after a few complaints—that’s what “venting” is all about, right?—but every time my mom heard this, very gently and naturally, she would find a good thing to say about whomever we were complaining about.

It was an amazing strategy, and it’s a practice that has continued to work to this day, without fail. Naturally, we kids disliked this quality a lot, since it just didn’t fit with where we were in life. We wanted to complain, and that was that. But, my brain at the time was, of course, observing and making mental notes.

As the years passed, I grew to appreciate this trait in my mother more and more, to the point in which it turned into respect. A likely easier route for a parent, after all, is to try to be your kids’ friends, rather than show them tough love and a good example. At the end of the day, my mom was spot on.

And isn’t this the right way to live—to see the good in situations, even when they might seem bleak, and to see the good in people, even when they might seem unpleasant? I have realized over time that that is what higher, godly love is partly about. It’s about not returning insults in kind and having love for others no matter how you might be treated. Of course, I don’t think this means that you shouldn’t act when things are wrong, but the feelings in your heart toward your fellow human beings should not grow sour.

For years, I found this proverb strange, for, in truth, a lot of clouds really don’t have silver linings. I wrestled with this question for quite some time until once, when I was on a plane, I felt I had my answer. When you are up in the sky on a plane, it’s always sunny and blue, and that is where the silver linings are! Sometimes, they are just behind all the clouds, and we might not see them, but they are there, ever present and shining. As an 1840 text from The Dublin Magazine eloquently put it, “there’s a silver lining to every cloud that sails about the heavens if we could only see it.”

Origins

While the expression has been around for centuries and has appeared on both sides of the Atlantic in magazines, films, books, and so on, the first appearance in English that we are aware of is in John Milton’s “Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle,” from 1634, with the lovely lines: “Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud/Turn forth her silver lining on the night?”

Charles Dickens later did much to further popularize the phrase and gave credit where due with his line from “Bleak House”: “I turn my silver lining outward like Milton’s cloud.”

Yet it was an essay one year later, in 1853, which may have given the proverb its final push into popular parlance.

‘Dont Despair’

An American writer named Sarah Payson Willis Parton, whose pen name was the playful “Fanny Fern,” contributed regularly to Home Journal magazine and published a truly memorable piece. It was called “Nil Desperandum,” meaning “don’t despair” in Latin.

While I had hoped, for reasons of brevity, to provide only an excerpt here, it is simply too remarkably touching and too beautiful to shorten. (The capitalization is in the original.) Enjoy:

“NO, NEVER! Every cloud has a silver lining; and He who wove it knows when to turn it out. So, after every night, however long or dark, there shall yet come a golden morning. Your noblest powers are never developed in prosperity. Any bark may glide in smooth water, with a favoring gale; but that is a brave, skilful oarsman who rows up stream, against the current, with adverse winds, and no cheering voice to wish him ‘God speed.’ Keep your head above the wave; let neither sullen despair nor weak vacillation drag you under. Heed not the poisoned arrow of sneaking treachery that whizzes past you from the shore. Judas sold himself when he sold his Master; and for him there dawned no resurrection morning!

“'Tis glorious to battle on with a brave heart, while cowering pusillanimity turns trembling back. Dream not of the word ‘surrender!’ When one frail human reed after another breaks, or bends beneath you, lean on the ‘Rock of Ages.’ The Great Architect passes you through the furnace but to purify. The fire may scorch, but it shall never consume you. He will yet label you ‘fine gold.’ The narrow path may be thorny to your tender feet; but the ‘promised land’ lies beyond! The clusters of Hope may be seen with the eye of faith; your hand shall yet grasp them; your eyes revel, from the mountain top, over the green pastures and still waters of peace. You shall yet unbuckle your dusty armor, while soft breezes shall fan your victor temples. Nil desperandum!”

When I look up at the sky and see silver linings (on days when they show themselves to us mere mortals), I think of my mom and her example, which I will take with me forever.

Nil desperandum! Don’t despair! For every cloud has a silver lining. We just might not see it.