A short note on the secret to happiness penned by a cash-strapped Albert Einstein in a Tokyo hotel has sold for $US1.3 million ($A1.7 million).

The physicist’s short formula for happy living was sold at an auction in Jerusalem this week.

Einstein was en route to Japan in 1922 when the announcement came he would be awarded the 1921 Nobel prize in physics, Winner’s Auctions and Exhibitions said.

Upon his arrival in Tokyo, he holed up in his hotel room trying to put his thoughts to paper.

When a messenger came to his room to make a delivery, Einstein found himself without any money for a tip.

Instead, he handed him a signed note on Imperial Hotel Tokyo stationary with a single sentence written in German: “A calm and humble life will bring more happiness than the pursuit of success and the constant restlessness that comes with it.”

According to the auction house, Einstein advised the messenger to keep the note, saying that some day its value would be worth more than amount of a standard tip.

Almost a 100 years later, Einstein was proven right after the bellboy’s nephew contacted the auction house to put the note up for sale.

A second note written at the same time that simply reads, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”, sold for $US240,000 ($A309,000) the auction house said.

The new owners have not been named, with Winner’s Auctions only saying the buyer of one of the notes was a European who wished to remain anonymous.

-With AAP