Most laypeople--even grad-school admissions officers--can't tell Bodoni from baloney. A best-case scenario is that they won't even notice you used a different font for the extract quotes. A worst-case scenario is that they will notice, and think it's a mistake. My suggestion would be either to use Baskerville throughout, or use something obviously different for the extract quotes, maybe a humanist sans serif like Agenda Light.

It occurred to me to try using my book-weight Centaur revival, Mythology. I quite like the effect: it has a humanist, vaguely hand-written feel to it which nonetheless doesn't seem to clash overmuch with the surrounding Baskerville.

I'll experiment a bit more, but I think it's promising...

Incidentally, as an undergrad I seem to have had some truly appalling judgement when it came to fonts. I found at least two essays where I'd set the entire text in Souvenir. Printed on a 24-pin dot matrix!

And that wasn't even the worst of it. I can only plead feckless youth and stupidity. :)

I think that pairings such as Baskerville + Centaur don’t work at all. If I noticed such a setting, I would assume that somebody made a mistake. Mojo’s suggestion—a humanist sans—sounds (and probably looks) better to me. Have a look at John Sans for something that blends in well with Baskerville.

PS: Check this for an impression of John Sans (and Štorm’s own Baskerville).

Alex, as others already pointed out, I wouldn't set indented quotations in a different font: I think you should mantain the overall texture of the page homogenueus. Instead, you could try a smaller size and leading (eg. main text in 11 pts, quotations in 9,5): that is the standard way in essays literature. Which Baskerville are you using, by the way? It looks like some version of Berthold or Luin's "Classico". And may I suggest you to check the apostrophes? The ones you're using don't seem right.

@R. It's the slight handwritten feel that I'm after, which I hope outweighs any dissonance from combining two such different styles. Regarding a humanist sans, that rather seems like going in the opposite direction. Actually, I did consider URW A028 (very similar to Albertus), but I found it was too dark for this purpose.

@ncaleffi I've wondered if using a different font is appropriate. I just feel that a highly regular transitional like Baskerville doesn't really 'work' with the archaic language of the quoted text. (Incidentally, it's URW Baskerville that I'm using.)

Actually, I think I have a version of Fry Baskerville somewhere. Maybe using that for the quotations might work - IMO it has a slightly more organic feel than a true Baskerville...

BTW I mentioned that Souvenir wasn't the worst of the lot... I found another old essay which I apparently set in Korinna...

I don't think an admissions committee will put your application in the reject pile due to use of weird fonts, but I think if the Baskerville doesn't get along with the text you are quoting, you should consider changing the whole document rather than using a completely different font for the extracts. FWIW, for an essay that covers all of Habsburg history from Middle Ages to 1918, I'd probably use something that looks academic but otherwise kind of "neutral", like Sabon or Minion.

It's more for my own gratification that I'm trying to beautify it. I don't suppose the admissions people would care if it was in double-spaced Times (as the original version was).

As for Baskerville, I chose it because I recently bought it and am keen to try it out in academic writing. I think it works very well for the overall text... I think the Fry version actually might do for the quotations.