The quotations are listed without additional commentary or explanatory notes, although the volume does contain an introduction to the work of Thomas Aquinas written by Theodore E. James.

[citation needed] It is one of a series of quotation dictionaries compiled by editor Morris Stockhammer, the others covering Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx and Plato.

[citation needed] The Dictionary contains quotations from the works of Thomas Aquinas, arranged under an alphabetical list of keywords, beginning with "Abstinence" and ending with "Zeal".

[4][5] Since its publication, the Dictionary has been frequently cited in bibliographies of recommended reference works on the life of Thomas Aquinas, although it attracted criticism in scholarly reviews when it was first published, mainly due to the selection and arrangement of material.

Bynagle also commented that, due to the keyword method of indexing used, the work lacks headings for concepts which would normally appear in discussions of Aquinas, such as "Ontology", "via negativa" or "The Five Ways".