Do I need to cite a quotation contained in a quotation?

According to the MLA Handbook, you do not need to reproduce a source’s “editorial apparatus—that is, note numbers or symbols, parenthetical citations, cross-references, figure references, and the like” (sec. 6.68). The logic behind this guidance is that readers can go to the source itself to find that source’s own citations. But in some cases, it might be helpful to acknowledge the source of a quotation within a quotation.

Let’s say that you want to use the following passage from page 50 of Elizabeth S. Goodstein’s Experience without Qualities:

Literature does not simply “mirror man’s problems and his attempts to come to terms with them” (5); it is a privileged site for reflection on the meaning of human experience.

Goodstein is quoting and citing Reinhard Kuhn’s book The Demon of Noontide. When you quote the passage from Goodstein’s book, you would omit the parenthetical citation “(5).” But you could specify in your own prose that Goodstein is quoting Kuhn. The following provides an example of what you might write:

Goodstein explains, quoting Kuhn’s The Demon of Noontide, that “[l]iterature does not simply ‘mirror man’s problems and his attempts to come to terms with them’; it is a privileged site for reflection on the meaning of human experience” (50).

Work Cited

Goodstein, Elizabeth S. Experience without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity. Stanford UP, 2005.

Note that there is no need to include a works-cited-list entry for Kuhn’s book as well. Readers will find Kuhn’s book and the page number of the quotation cited in Goodstein’s work.

Work Cited

MLA Handbook. 9th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021. MLA Handbook Plus, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1632/ORIW5168.