If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love,
I have become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and
all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.
And if I dole out all my goods, and
if I deliver my body that I may boast
but have not love, nothing I am profited.
Love is long suffering,
love is kind,
it is not jealous,
love does not boast,
it is not inflated.
It is not discourteous,
it is not selfish,
it is not irritable,
it does not enumerate the evil.
It does not rejoice over the wrong,
but rejoices in the truth
It covers all things, it has faith for all things,
it hopes in all things, it endures in all things.
Love never falls in ruins;
but whether prophecies, they will be abolished; or
tongues, they will cease; or
knowledge, it will be superseded.
For we know in part and we prophecy in part.
But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will be superseded.
When I was an infant,
I spoke as an infant, I reckoned as an infant;
when I became [an adult],
I abolished the things of the infant.
For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face.
Now I know in part, but then I shall know
as also I was fully known.
But now remains faith, hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
— Paul the Apostle