How to disable > quoting of lines starting with From in email body?

[Danny MacMillan]

Hello,

Every time I read an email that has a line in the message body that
starts with the word "From", the line is quoted with a > character.

It is my understanding that this is done necessarily when email is
stored in the mbox format to distinguish lines that start new email
messages from lines that are just part of the message body and just
Happen to start with "From".  However, I am not using the mbox
message format.

I am using qmail with Maildir delivery as my MTA.  I read my email
using mutt to connect to a dovecot IMAP server, all built from
ports on a FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE machine.

I know this isn't a FreeBSD question per se, but I can't identify
the piece of software that is either a) inserting the > when it
shouldn't or b) not removing the > when it should.  I have done
my best to search the net for the answer but when the most
significant search term is the word "From" and the second most
significant is the > character ... well, let's just say I was
not successful and leave it at that.  I vaguely remember reading
something about it a long time ago before I myself was plagued
with the problem but I can't for the life of me remember where.

I'm hoping someone here can shed some light on this subject because
I can't and it's driving me crazy.

Thanks,