This line is a boastful, self-serving twist on the old proverb that even bad luck usually does somebody some good. The standard saying holds that almost any piece of misfortune will benefit someone, even if not the person it struck. “Not the ill wind which blows no man to good” takes that idea and turns it into a brag: whatever has happened, it is good news for me. The double negative is the joke. It sounds at first like a denial, but it actually confirms that this particular wind has blown somebody, namely the speaker, straight to good fortune.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘not the ill wind which blows no man to good’?
The line comes from Shakespeare, spoken by Pistol in Henry IV, Part 2. Falstaff greets him with “What wind blew you hither, Pistol?” and Pistol answers, “Not the ill wind which blows no man to good.” Pistol has arrived with news that will benefit Falstaff greatly, the old king is dead and Falstaff’s companion Prince Hal is now king, so the reply is a flourish of mock-proverbial wit dressed up for the occasion. It is characteristic of Pistol’s speech throughout the play, which is full of inflated, quasi-heroic language borrowed and twisted from familiar sayings.
Shakespeare was not inventing the underlying proverb. The saying that an ill wind blows somebody good was already established well before the play was written, having been recorded in print in John Heywood’s 1546 collection of proverbs. What Pistol’s line does is take that existing wisdom and compress it into a single boastful sentence, replacing the proverb’s general claim that misfortune helps someone, anyone, with a specific and self-interested one: it helps me. The humour lies in hearing a well-worn piece of folk wisdom squeezed through a pompous, slightly absurd character for his own advantage.
The phrase survives today mainly as a literary curiosity rather than everyday speech. The plainer form, an ill wind, is the version still used in ordinary conversation, while Pistol’s fuller, doubled-up wording is encountered chiefly by readers of the play or by anyone tracing the proverb back to its Shakespearean appearance.