Montaigne 1.5
As to ourselves, who, not being so overscrupulous, give the honour of the war to him who has the profit of it, and who say, with Lysander, that ‘when the lion’s skin is too short, we must eke it out with a bit from that of the fox’, the most usual occasions of surprise are derived from this exercise of cunning; and there is no moment, we say, when a chief should be more wide-awake, than that of parleys and treaties of accomodation.