Caesar wrote: Veni, vidi, vici.
Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit. Most true, you spiteful critic.
Sentences like these do not need italic or quotation-marks. The selection of the colon, the change from English to a foreign language, the beginning of the quotation with a capital letter, the context, and the occasional but improper use of quotation-marks, are enough to make it apparent that the foreign words are quotations. To set an entire paragraph of the quoted matter of a foreign language in italic, or even to select it too freely for phrases, practically nullifies its value as a display letter for the subheadings or for any other part of the book in which distinction is really needed.
Words and short phrases quoted from Greek or German are usually set in roman between quotation-marks; but if the quoted word or phrase is made the text or subject of fine verbal criticism, it should be put in the proper character of its own language. To the critical German author italic is offensive as it appears in this sentence:
The connection with potamos and with posis is equivocal and insufficient.
The connection with ποταμός and with πόσις is equivocal and insufficient.
Greek characters, as they are shown in the second example, should be preferred to those of italic.
