the.com/silver lining
The hope you glue to a disaster before admitting it's just a disaster.
means The hidden benefit or hopeful aspect you can find within a difficult or unfortunate situation.
from Rooted in the simple visual fact that sunlight behind a dark cloud rims its edge with a bright, silvery glow. The phrase owes its popularity to a line in John Milton's 1634 masque 'Comus': 'Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night?' The idiom 'every cloud has a silver lining' crystallized from that image over the following centuries, turning a weather observation into a creed of forced optimism.
- origin
- Milton, 1634, clouds literally edged by moonlight
- logic flaw
- every cloud has one, including hurricanes
- overuse zone
- breakups, layoffs, and funerals of distant relatives