W. Somerset Maugham
8 books by W. Somerset Maugham to read free, each with its best passages and lines, and the best quotes from all of them below.
Where to start
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The Magician
A young engaged couple meet a mysterious man who claims to have practical knowledge of the occult.
72,269 words, about 5 hours
Then
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Of Human Bondage
Maugham’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece follows a club-footed orphan’s rise in the medical profession and his lifelong search for happiness.
260,027 words, about 18 hours
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The Moon and Sixpence
London stockbroker Charles Strickland abandons his family and travels to Paris to become a painter.
75,368 words, about 5 hours
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The Painted Veil
A superficial young woman is found out in an affair by her husband, who then forces her to accompany him on a mission of great risk.
73,200 words, about 5 hours
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Cakes and Ale
An author is placed in a dilemma when he’s approached to provide background for a biography of a novelist with whom he’s had a relationship.
70,299 words, about 5 hours
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Ashenden
A collection of short stories based on the experiences of an intelligence agent during World War I.
88,109 words, about 6 hours
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On a Chinese Screen
A collection of short vignettes about the people and places W. Somerset Maugham encountered during his travels along the Yangtze River in 1919–20.
51,619 words, about 4 hours
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The Trembling of a Leaf
78,504 words, about 6 hours
W. Somerset Maugham quotes
The formal garden reminded one of a light woman, no longer young, who sought, with faded finery, with powder and paint, to make a brave show of despair.
She felt vaguely the pity of that child deprived of the only love in the world that is quite unselfish.
To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults.
Mrs. Garstin was a hard, cruel, managing, ambitious, parsimonious and stupid woman.
I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, and it’s important, the matter is more often important to him than to you.
Fact is a poor storyteller.
They wear the disdainful air of profiteers forced to traverse a world in which many people are not so rich as they.
They are the mountains of the country of your dreams.
I confess that I have no imagination and no sense of humour. I am a plain, practical man, but I can see to the end of my nose with extreme clearness. Fortunately it is rather a long one.
Mr. Carey was accustomed to say that he was the only man in his parish who worked seven days a week.
God damn my wife. She is an excellent woman. I wish she was in hell.
Kitty in a panic married Walter Fane.
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit.
Ashenden had a confident belief in the stupidity of the human animal, which in the course of his life had stood him in good stead.
“Of course it doesn’t look like a room in London,” she said, “but it might quite well be a room in some nice place in England, Cheltenham, say, or Tunbridge Wells.”
The trade wind gets into your blood and you are filled with an impatience for the unknown.
That is an answer which has the advantage of sounding well and meaning nothing,
He was appealing unconsciously to gods older to his race than the God of Israel.
Mr. Crabbe was as dead as mutton, but Mr. Crabbe continued to write moral stories in rhymed couplets.
What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favour.