No hay mal que por bien no venga

[Marsopa]

And I ran across "No hay mal que por bien no venga." I do understand that this idiom means something like good things can come from bad, or every cloud has a silver lining, but it has always seemed like it should be "No hay bien que por mal no venga...:"

Can anyone straighten me out???

thanks,

Marospa

[poli]

You definitely answered your own question, and it's often true too.

[Rusty]

I don't understand why you would want to say the opposite. Some good usually comes from a setback. In retrospect, we see that even our worst trials have helped us in some way. Read a little more about the saying here.

[Tomisimo]

Changed the thread's title.

I hear what you're saying Marsopa, I actually used to think the same thing back in the day. Let's walk through the meaning.

No hay mal que por bien no venga.
Grammatically, we can change this to:

No hay mal que no venga por bien.
Now let's make it a bit more explicit:

No hay cosa mala que no venga sino por tu bien.
Now, if we try to translate that literally into English, it'll look kinda funny since we wouldn't normally use double negatives like that:

There is no bad thing that comes(that happens to you), that didn't come (or happen to you) for your benefit
We might normally turn that around and make it an affirmative sentence:

All bad things come/happen to your for your benefit/for a reason
Hope this explanation somehow helps you a bit

[breadb]

I think I remember this phrase from a song.

[Rusty]

Gloria Estefan sings a song with that title in her Mi Tierra album (track 6). The whole album is great.

[sosia]

No hay mal que por bien no venga-->
No hay mal (que recibas) que por bien no (te) venga (después)
The bad thing you receive can be good for you, you must learn/take something good from a bad thing --> your "good things can come from bad"

If you say "No hay bien que por mal no venga...:" you're saying "all the good things comes from bad things", and that's not the same. Good thing can come alone (like lottery "
saludos

[CrOtALiTo]

Yes, Sosia, you are right, if you get good things of things bad, well, that said is very used on my country, my grandfather always said that (Dicho), I believe that the said are not whole in the this post, because when my grandfather told me the said that was longer, but I don't remind the whole said.

[Elaina]

Something bad happens but because of that "bad" thing that happens, something else, but good, happens.

So the good thing that happens is a side-effect of the bad thing that happened.

For example, you are married and because of whatever you end up getting divorced and you are devastated.......you think it is the end of the world, but then through time, you meet the most perfect "person" that you get along well with, you agree on everything, you love each other very much and you live happily ever-after.

Ergo.......no hay mal que por bien no venga.



my

[Marsopa]

Thank you, David,

That was a great explanation. When you added the "tu" in there, I could see it.

Funny, that we had the same misunderstanding. Now I don't feel so dumb!