Ferdinando Emilio Abbate’s book of aphorisms addresses various topics, with the brief sayings arranged under broad chapter headings.

The text is divided into five sections: “On Great Matters,” “On the Trivial and the Hidden,” “On Justice,” “On Love” and “On Faith and Spirit.” The author jumps into the collection without an introduction or prologue for context.

Throughout, the sayings vary significantly in tone and approach. Many cluster around a loose structural parallelism: “Recklessness is unconscious impatience; impatience is conscious recklessness“; “Philosophy thinks in order to prove; science proves in order to think.”

Some are mystical: “The rainbow is the warmth of the earth coloring the sky; a breath of life painting the infinite.” Many are challenging to understand, with no obvious takeaway: “Courting a woman is the therapy of those without talent; winning her is the diagnosis of those who have it.”

Abbate’s Christian faith drives the final chapter with some pointed comments at Christians he feels are practicing their faith wrong: “A Christian without witness is just an aristocrat enrolled in an exclusive club of philanthropists. It is witness, in fact, that distinguishes a true Christian from a member of the ‘Friends of Jesus Club.’“ Here, the aphorisms can also be arch and sometimes appear critical of others: “Silence is God’s word; that is why the world is so full of noise.”

As a whole, the book is mostly confounding. Without an introduction, chapter beginnings, or narrative to put these quips into context, readers are left afloat —often amidst words that sound important, but on closer inspection, simply mystify, as in: “The proud walk on their heads; the humble walk on their hearts;” “The retroactivity of a law is the funeral of the rule of law”; “There is more light in darkness than darkness in light.”

In all, this book will puzzle readers as much as it will provoke them, making its appeal highly limited.