... On the whole, the best fortress you can have, is in not being hated by your subjects. If they hate you no fortress will save you... - Niccolò Machiavelli

...never in peaceful times stand idle..

When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.

Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.