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Who really said it

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death

Written by Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519 · Florentine polymath, painter & engineer
Verified In copyright

This is a real Leonardo aphorism, recorded among the moral maxims of his notebooks (No. 1173 in J. P. Richter’s edition) from the Italian “Sì come una giornata bene spesa dà lieto dormire, così una vita bene usata dà lieto morire.” The exact English wording most people quote is a translator’s — it matches Edward MacCurdy’s 1938 translation, whereas Richter’s older rendering reads “a day well spent procures a happy sleep…” instead.

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death” Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. Edward MacCurdy (1938); aphorism No. 1173 in Richter's edition. Original Italian: "Sì come una giornata bene spesa dà lieto dormire, così una vita bene usata dà lieto morire."

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Edward MacCurdy translation — Reynal & Hitchcock (New York) / Jonathan Cape (London), 1938). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Leonardo da Vinci — Florentine polymath, painter & engineer. Theme: "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Aphorism
No. 1173 (Richter numbering)
Original
Italian — “Sì come una giornata bene spesa dà lieto dormire, così una vita bene usata dà lieto morire”
Translation
Edward MacCurdy, 1938 (the popular wording); cf. Richter, 1883

Sì come una giornata bene spesa dà lieto dormire, così una vita bene usata dà lieto morire. — “As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”

Richter’s public-domain 1883 edition renders the same aphorism (No. 1173) as “As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death.”

Richter’s notebooks, aphorism No. 1173 (Project Gutenberg)

How we traced it

  • The line is genuinely Leonardo’s: it appears as aphorism No. 1173 in Richter’s edition of the notebooks, whose 1883 wording reads “a day well spent procures a happy sleep… a life well employed procures a happy death.”
  • The familiar wording — “brings happy sleep… life well used… brings happy death” — is the one listed in Wikiquote’s sourced section as sourced to Edward MacCurdy’s 1938 translation.
  • The Italian original is well attested: it is reproduced with the same English rendering in reference collections such as the Logos multilingual dictionary.
In copyright

Leonardo’s underlying Italian aphorism (c. 1490s) and J. P. Richter’s 1883 English rendering are both in the public domain. But the specific English wording quoted here matches Edward MacCurdy’s 1938 translation, first published by Reynal & Hitchcock / Jonathan Cape, which remains under copyright — so the popular phrasing itself is not public-domain even though the thought is centuries old.

Fact-check

The nuance

Unlike most viral “Leonardo” quotes, this one is real — Leonardo did write it in his notebooks. The catch is the wording: the smooth English everyone shares is a 20th-century translator’s, and it is that exact phrasing (not the older public-domain one) that carries a copyright.

Quoted as Leonardo’s own words translation, not verbatim

Leonardo wrote in Italian (“una vita bene usata dà lieto morire”). The polished English “so life well used brings happy death” is a translator’s choice; Richter’s 1883 version instead says “a life well employed procures a happy death.”

Sites that present the popular wording as timeless / public-domain 1938 rendering

The exact popular wording is catalogued in Wikiquote’s sourced section as Edward MacCurdy’s 1938 translation — a work still in copyright, not the pre-1931 Richter text.

The thought is authentically Leonardo’s (notebook aphorism No. 1173); the familiar English is Edward MacCurdy’s 1938 rendering of it.

Context

Why it endures

The aphorism sits among the short moral maxims scattered through Leonardo’s working manuscripts, where practical notes on optics and machinery are interrupted by reflections on time, learning and death. Its balanced form — a well-lived day earns easy sleep, a well-lived life earns an easy death — is a classic memento vivere as much as a memento mori.

In Italy the line is a household saying, famously beloved of the science broadcaster Piero Angela and quoted by his son Alberto in tribute after his death — which is part of why the Italian original stays so firmly anchored to Leonardo even as the English travels under looser paraphrases.

A well-spent day earns sleep; a well-spent life earns death without fear.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Mortality Purpose Work

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Richter) — full textgutenberg.org

Public-domain 1883 Richter edition; aphorism No. 1173 is the source line, worded “a day well spent procures a happy sleep…”
Leonardo da Vinci — Wikiquote (Sourced)en.wikiquote.org

Lists the popular wording in its sourced section under Edward MacCurdy’s 1938 translation.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. MacCurdy (1938), Vol. Iarchive.org

The MacCurdy 1938 translation that matches the popular English wording.
Leonardo aphorism with Italian originallogosdictionary.org

Gives the original Italian “Sì come una giornata bene spesa…” alongside the English rendering.
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete (ebook)gutenberg.org

Browsable Project Gutenberg edition of the Richter notebooks.

The true author

About Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

1452–1519 · Florentine polymath, painter & engineer

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was a Florentine painter, engineer and natural philosopher whose thousands of surviving manuscript pages mix anatomy, hydraulics and mechanics with short moral maxims like this one. Because his fame makes him a magnet for invented quotations, it is worth noting that this line is not a fabrication: it appears in his own notebooks. What circulates online is a modern English translation of his Italian, not a verbatim quotation.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, arranged, rendered into English and introduced by Edward MacCurdy (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1938); the aphorism is No. 1173 in Jean Paul Richter, ed., The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (London: Sampson Low, 1883).

MLA (9th ed.)

Leonardo da Vinci. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Translated by Edward MacCurdy, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1938.

APA (7th ed.)

Leonardo da Vinci. (1938). The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (E. MacCurdy, Trans.). Reynal & Hitchcock.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/as-a-well-spent-day-brings-happy-sleep-so-life-well-used

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