1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give all I have to the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant
5 or rude, it does not seek its own, it is not provoked, it keeps no record of wrongs,
6 it does not rejoice in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails; but where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part;
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know fullyeven as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.