Charles Dickens, Hard Times

"He had not much hair. One might have fancied hehad talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness" (narrator, describing Josiah Bounderby)

"This, again, was one of the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest hands didn't each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I dod you cna do. Why don't you go and do it?" (117)

Words
Commodious
Peremptory
Bolus
Conchology
Vaunt
Chandler
Supercilious
Dudgeon
Inveigle
Stolid
Simoom
Truckle Bed
Cutlass
Carbine
Improvident
Enervate
Whelp

Henry David Thoreau, Walking

Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking (7)

Words
Sedulous
Vespirtinal
Scurf

Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

"Energy and curiousity are the lifeblood of universities; the desire to find out, to uncover, to dig deeper, to puzzle out obscurities, is the spirit of the university and it is a channelling of that unresting curiousity that holds mankind together." (86-7)

"God's a rum old joker, Clem, and we must never forget it." (101)

Words
Sorn (v)
Hypotyposis
Magus
Adiposity
Pneumatic
Hetaera
Craven
Salutary
Quoin
Warren
Threnody
Meccano
Luthier
Saturnine

Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage

From the entry on "eatable; edible" entry in Usage and Abusage

An edible fungus, if badly cooked, may be uneatable. Similarly, coffee as made in England is potable but not always drinkable.

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

Dixon liked and revered him for his air of detesting everything that presented itself to his senses, and of not meaning to let this detestation become staled by custom. (34)

The one indispensible answer to an environment bristling with people and things one thought were bad was to go on finding out new ways in which one could think they were bad. (129)

Words
Fulsome
Florid
Temporize
Vole
Vertiginous
Objurgatory
Plangency
Invigilate

Fowler's Modern English Usage

From Ernest Gowers' Preface, about Fowler:

The most prominent element in Fowler's idiosyncracy was evidently what the Romans called aequanimitus. He knew what he wanted in life; what he wanted was within his reach; he took it and was content. (v-vi)

Also this:

...those who are over-fussy about the placing of the adverb only are the sort of friends from whom the English language may well pray to be saved. (vii)

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler...

Words
Aleatory
Quire
Aubergine
Acidulous
Rowan
Autochthonous
Hygrometer
Anemometer
Pluviometer
Escarpment
Relict
Belvedere
Chiaroscuro
Viscera
Afflatus
Cockade
Lazaretto
Postulant
Ramified
Peregrinations
Petroliferous