• 1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
  • 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
  • 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
  • 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
  • 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
  • 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
  • 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
  • 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 completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
  • 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
  • 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
  • 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.