A proverb is a short,well-known saying that expresses a common truth or belief.

VOA: special.2009.08.30

Okay, it could be a bit of a problem if this text has become the basis for a system of religious faith or belief, and your assumptions about it are that its telling a truth that is singular in nature.

如果这本书成为一些宗教信念系统的基本,那就有问题了,你会臆断，这本书上的都是真确的，都是非凡的。

耶鲁公开课 - 旧约导论课程节选

With the rise of Christianity, western religion came to be defined to a large degree by the confession of, or the intellectual assent to, certain doctrinal points of belief.

随着基督教的兴起，西方宗教被定义成,很大程度上指被解释为，或被知识分子一致认可为，对特定教义的信仰。

耶鲁公开课 - 旧约导论课程节选

There is a necessary and inevitable tension between philosophy and belief or to put it another way between philosophy and the civic pieties that hold the city together.

所以紧张关系必然,且无可避免地存在于哲学与信念之间,或换句话说,介于哲学与维系全城的公民虔诚间。

耶鲁公开课 - 政治哲学导论课程节选

In many moods--at least,when I think about not the simple, the ordinary David Smith case with a single belief or two, but the full bodied--that's a bad term-- the full blown Napoleon case with all the memories,all the beliefs.

至少我想到的不是，这个简单的只拥有一两个信念的案例，而是完全的，不该这么说-,完整的拥有全部记忆和信念的拿破仑。

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选

There is a kind of license that comes from the denial of any restraints on our desires or a kind of relativistic belief that all desires are equal and all should be permitted.

有种许可来自于,拒绝限制我们的欲望,或一种相对的信念,即所有的欲望都是平等且都应被允许,柏拉图对民主的观点。

耶鲁公开课 - 政治哲学导论课程节选