Lettre de saint Paul Apôtre aux Colossiens

Chapter Thirteen of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers, 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.

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind ; love is not jealous or boastful ; it is not arrogant or rude.

Love does not insist on its own way ; it is not irritable or resentful ; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends ; as for prophecies, they will pass away ; as for tongues, they will cease ; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect ; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.

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 gave up childish ways.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part ; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.

So faith, hope, love abide, these three ; but the greatest of these is love.