"Volte-face" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... capacity to elucidate the facts of organic life, or it would break down under the strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense; and, for once, common sense carried the day. The result has been that complete volte-face of the whole scientific world, which must seem so surprising to the present generation. I do not mean to say that all the leaders of biological science have avowed themselves Darwinians; but I do not think that there is a single zoologist, or botanist, or palaeontologist, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... followed her with growing wonder. A volte-face so little in keeping with her mental habits immediately struck him as a feint; yet so strangely did it accord with his own secret reluctances that these inclined him to let ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the mechanism were carried out and on October 17th and 21st of the same year further flights were made. By this time certain influential Teuton aeronautical experts who had previously ridiculed Zeppelin's idea had made a perfect volte-face. They became staunch admirers of the system, while other meteorological savants participated in the trials for the express purpose of ascertaining just what the ship could do. As a result of elaborate trigonometrical calculations it was ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... says, when anything is proposed, "If Madame approves." When he comes to his wife's room, with that heavy step which makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she, not wanting him, calls out: "Don't come in!" he performs a military volte-face and says humbly: "You will let me know when I can see you?"—in the very tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the banks of the Danube: "Men, we must die, and die well, since there's nothing else we can do!" I have ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac |
