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A Lifestyle Tip From Einstein

Big Enough Book | Happiness | Simple Living

September 12, 2020

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By: Lee LeFever

I write books and run a company called Common Craft. I recently moved from Seattle to a rural island. Here, I write about online business, book publishing, modern home construction, and occasionally, dumb jokes.

From The Guardian:

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.

The handwritten note from 1922 recently sold at auction for $1.5m. The note described Einstein’s theory for living a happy life. It reads:

“a quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest”.

Well said. This is Einstein and his second wife Elsa in 1921, a year before he wrote the note and won the Nobel Prize for Physics:

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