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 Handwritten advice to Japanese courier in lieu of a tip exceeds pre-auction estimate by more than 31,000% 
 
 'More valuable than a regular tip': Einstein's handwritten note to courier sells for $1.5m 
 
 A note that Albert Einstein gave to a courier in Tokyo briefly describing his theory on happy living has sold at auction in Jerusalem for $1.56m (€1.33m ), according to auctioneers. 
 
 The winning bid for the note far exceeded the pre-auction estimate of between $5,000 and $8,000, according to Winner’s auctions. 
 
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 “It was an all-time record for an auction of a document in Israel,” said Winner’s spokesman Meni Chadad, adding that the buyer was a European who wished to remain anonymous. 
 
 The note, on Imperial Hotel Tokyo stationery, says in German that “a quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest”. 
 
 A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest Albert Einstein 
 
 Bidding in person, online and by phone started at $2,000. A flurry of offers pushed the price rapidly up for about 20 minutes until the final two potential buyers bid against each other by phone. 
 
 Applause broke out in the room when the sale was announced. 
 
 “I am really happy that there are people out there who are still interested in science and history and timeless deliveries in a world which is developing so fast,” the seller said on condition of anonymity after the sale. 
 
 A second Einstein note written at the same time that simply reads “where there’s a will, there’s a way” sold for $240,000, Winner’s said. 
 
 The German-born physicist, most famous for his theory of relativity, was on a lecture tour in Japan when he wrote the autographed notes, previously unknown to researchers, in 1922. He had recently been informed that he was to receive the Nobel prize for physics, and his fame outside scientific circles was growing. 
 
 A Japanese courier arrived at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo to deliver Einstein a message. The courier either refused to accept a tip, in line with local practice, or Einstein had no small change available. 
 
 Either way, Einstein didn’t want the messenger to leave empty-handed, so he wrote him two notes by hand in German, according to the seller, a relative of the messenger. 
 
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 “Maybe if you’re lucky those notes will become much more valuable than just a regular tip,” Einstein told the messenger, according to the seller, a resident of the German city of Hamburg. 
 
 Two other letters Einstein wrote in later years were also auctioned on Tuesday, fetching prices of $33,600 and $9,600. 
 
 In June, letters written by Einstein about God, Israel and physics sold for nearly $210,000 at a Jerusalem auction. 
 
 Einstein served as a non-resident governor of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. When he died in 1955, he left the institution his archives, making it the owner of the world’s most extensive collection of his documents. ||||| Image copyright Reuters Image caption The letter is regarded as a clear statement of Einstein's religious beliefs 
 
 A handwritten letter by Albert Einstein in which he grapples with the concept of religion has smashed predictions and sold for nearly $2.9m (£2.3m). 
 
 The so-called "God letter" was written in 1954 and was expected to fetch $1.5m (£1.2m) at auction in New York. 
 
 The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, then 74, wrote the one-and-a-half page note to German philosopher Eric Gutkind in response to one of his works. 
 
 It is seen as a key statement in the debate between science and religion. 
 
 "This remarkably candid, private letter was written a year before Einstein's death and remains the most fully articulated expression of his religious and philosophical views," a statement from Christie's says. 
 
 It fetched almost double the auction house's predicted price of between $1m-1.5m. 
 
 In the letter, written in his native German, Einstein takes issue with the belief in God. 
 
 "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses," he writes. "The Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends." 
 
 It continues: "No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can [for me] change anything about this." 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Albert Einstein pictured around the time he wrote the so-called "God letter" 
 
 The physicist also muses on his own Jewish identity, writing that it is "like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition". 
 
 "The Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and in whose mentality I feel profoundly anchored, still for me does not have any different kind of dignity from all other peoples," he writes. 
 
 It is not the first time Einstein's letters have been put up for auction. 
 
 Last year, a note written to an Italian chemistry student who had refused to meet him sold for $6,100. 
 
 It was sold alongside a number of other letters from Einstein, including a 1928 note that went for $103,000, in which he set out his thoughts for his third stage of the theory of relativity. 
 
 In 2017, a note in which he gave advice on happy living sold for $1.56m in Jerusalem. 
 
 A single sentence, it reads: "A calm and humble life will bring more happiness than the pursuit of success and the constant restlessness that comes with it." ||||| (RNS) — A handwritten 1954 letter by physicist Albert Einstein in which the Nobel laureate is dismissive of religion in general and Judaism in particular is expected to bring a seven-figure price when auctioned by Christie’s in New York City on Dec. 4. 
 
 In the so-called God letter, written to philosopher Eric Gutkind, Einstein wrote that the word “God” was “for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses,” while calling the Bible “a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends.” 
 
 Einstein wrote the letter after reading Gutkind’s book “Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt,” a volume urged upon him by Dutch philosopher and mathematician Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. 
 
 Without Brouwer’s “repeated suggestion” that he read the book, Einstein wrote, he would not have engaged with the text because its arguments were “written in a language which is inaccessible to me,” specifically its spiritual references. 
 
 According to Peter Klarnet, the Christie’s expert handling the item, Einstein’s letter “is just a remarkable and very, very precise — and quite blunt — expression of his philosophy about religion. More than any of the others he’s written about the subject, he gets to the core of the subject.” 
 
 Speaking with Religion News Service, Klarnet said he anticipates a ready market for the document, which the firm gave a “somewhat conservative” estimate as bringing $1 million to $1.5 million. 
 
 “I think the level of interest is quite high,” he said. “We would term this a ‘masterpiece’ item as it stands with other important properties in the last 10 to 20 years.” 
 
 In 2002, Christie’s sold one of two copies of the physicist’s 1939 letter to then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning of Nazi Germany’s plans to develop atomic weaponry. That letter sold for $2 million, and since then interest in science-related items, such as first-edition copies of Sir Isaac Newton’s “Principia” and Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species,” has grown, according to Klarnet. 
 
 Along with the 1939 Einstein-Roosevelt letter, Klarnet noted the more than $6 million paid in 2013 for a letter Francis Crick wrote to his son after the discovery of the structure of DNA. 
 
 The Christie’s sale will come less than a month after another Einstein letter, in which he wrote in 1922 about his fears of growing anti-Semitism in his native Germany, sold at an auction in Israel for $32,000. 
 
 In the Gutkind letter, Einstein discussed his connection to the Jewish people — “to whom I gladly belong,” he wrote — but said, “For me the unadulterated Jewish religion is, like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition.” 
 
 Einstein dismissed the idea the Jews were God’s “chosen,” and he denied that they “have any different kind of dignity from all other peoples.” 
 
 Klarnet said the subtleties of Einstein’s philosophy were an aspect of the letter that could attract buyers. 
 
 “Although Einstein did not believe in an anthropomorphic God (and wrote) that the Bible was a book of stories, he still believed people should have a moral foundation, but it was up to individuals to realize that,” Klarnet said. 
 
 “The letter speaks to that and towards Einstein’s antipathy towards chauvinism, that he would place a religion he identified with on a pedestal above anyone else. That’s part of the magic of this letter and why it gets attention when it comes to the public eye,” he added. 
 
 Compelling as the Einstein letter may be, one scholar cautions against wielding it as a cudgel for atheism, as noted atheist Richard Dawkins has claimed. Ironically, Dawkins was one of several underbidders when the “God letter” was last auctioned, in 2008 in London. 
 
 According to Stanford University professor Thomas Ryckman, whose 2017 biography, “Einstein,” looked at its subject’s philosophical and physics studies, the letter has been “mischaracterized” by some as “Einstein’s emphatic rejection of religion.” 
 
 But, Ryckman told RNS via email, Einstein echoes the beliefs of the Italian philosopher Baruch Spinoza about “God, or Nature” (“Deus, sive Natura,” in Spinoza’s “Ethics”). Einstein described in several other places the “religious feeling” he experienced when in 1915 he was “able to uncover some part of the ordered structure of nature,” specifically the relativistic theory of gravitation.
– You really can put a price on happiness, or at least Albert Einstein's pithy theory on the matter: The theory, scribbled on a piece of paper and handed to a messenger, sold at auction for $1.56 million, AFP reports. The record-setting bid at Tuesday's sale in Jerusalem far surpassed estimates of $5,000 to $8,000, per Winner's auction house. Einstein scrawled the note on Imperial Hotel Tokyo stationery in 1922 while on a tour of Japan after being informed he'd won the Nobel Prize for physics. It reads in German: "A calm and humble life will bring more happiness than the pursuit of success and the constant restlessness that comes with it," per the BBC. The physicist better known for another theory gave the note to a courier who made a delivery to his room. Einstein didn't want the man to leave empty-handed, so instead of a tip he handed him two notes, the anonymous seller tells AFP. The second missive, which sold for $240,000, was less original. "Where there’s a will, there’s a way," it reads. "Maybe if you’re lucky those notes will become much more valuable than just a regular tip," Einstein told the man, says the seller, a relative of the courier who lives in Hamburg, Germany. The auction house says the buyer was a European who wants to remain anonymous, per the BBC. Two other letters Einstein wrote later were also auctioned, fetching prices of $33,600 and $9,600, per AFP. Other Einstein letters about God, Israel, and physics sold for almost $210,000 in June. (These US cities are the happiest.)