encapsulating a positive thing among many negative things

Is there a phrase that encapsulates 'this is a positive thing among many negative things'?

Context: I need to find a name for an article I am writing - which is about how a person turned everything negative into something beautiful.

Can anyone help?

Solution 1:

Every cloud has a silver lining:

In every bad situation there is an element of good

For an article title you can also shorten it to just Silver Lining.

Solution 2:

There is a phrase gold among the dross (where dross means worthless matter, and especially waste material in smelting metal). There are many variations on this phrase, including gold from dross, gold to dross, and perhaps most frequently, dross into gold.

This is derived from a Biblical passage in Proverbs 25 which actually refers to silver being separated from the dross. There are many literary references to silver/dross metaphors, but they appear to occur much less frequently than gold references, as reflected in this ngram.

If you are looking for a transformative term or phrase, there is the concept of an ugly duckling based on the tale by Andersen. The story describes an ugly duckling who is an outcast, but grows to be a beautiful swan.

Solution 3:

I like the phrase how

a flower emerges from a pot of dirt

Not sure whether it's applicable or not, but when I read your post this came to mind.

Perhaps you could adapt it to suit the scenario.

Solution 4:

A diamond in the rough

Here rough refers to the minerals (generally worthless) surrounding a diamond. This one has connotations of persistently digging through useless or negative things, to find that one diamond. In this case, the diamond is of obvious value, it’s just hidden among a lot of low-value/negative-value things.

It’s very similar to @bib’s suggestion of gold among the dross, though I have not personally heard that one used often. Certainly Google sees much more use of “diamond in the rough.”

Every cloud has its silver lining

Silver lining doesn’t imply the same amount of effort; it’s more just a positive aspect of something that is otherwise negative. It isn’t necessarily hard to find, but it may be hard to notice or appreciate due to the negative thing it came with. I commonly see it used, for example, when disasters brings a community together, helping one another out; that’s a good thing, but it’s not like anyone would recommend going through a disaster for the purposes of building or strengthening communal bonds.