What is the origin of the idiom every cloud has a silver lining?
“Silver lining” comes from a proverb often heard, “Every cloud has a silver lining,” which refers literally to the storm clouds described just above and is extended to the situations described above that. : EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING – “John Milton’s masque (dramatic entertainment) ‘Comus’ (1634) gave rise to the current proverb with the lines, ‘Was I deceiv’d, or did a sable cloud/ Turn forth her silver lining on the night?’ Charles Dickens, in his novel ‘Bleak House’ (1852), recalled the lines with ‘I turn my silver lining outward like Milton’s cloud,’ and the American impresario Phineas T. Barnum first recorded the wording of the modern saying in ‘Struggles and Triumphs’ (1869) with ‘Every cloud,’ says the proverb, ‘has a silver lining.'” From “Wise Words and Wives’ Tales: The Origins, Meanings and Time-Honored Wisdom of Proverbs and Folk Sayings Olde and New” by Stuart Flexner and Doris Flexner (Avon Books, New York, 1993). Optimists see it that way. But we all know people who
