“If you want a title, what's wrong with Mr? If you have always been that, then why lose your title?
I have a title, which is the same one that I have always had.
But it's not political. I have a CBE, which I accepted very gratefully.”

Ben Yamen's Song of Geometry (1853)
Context: Geometry, to which I have devoted my life, is honoured with the title of the Key of Sciences; but it is the Key of an ever open door which refuses to be shut, and through which the whole world is crowding, to make free, in unrestrained license, with the precious treasures within, thoughtless both of lock and key, of the door itself, and even of Science, to which it owes such boundless possessions, the New World included. The door is wide open and all may enter, but all do not enter with equal thoughtlessness. There are a few who wonder, as they approach, at the exhaustless wealth, as the sacred shepherd wondered at the burning bush of Horeb, which was ever burning and never consumed. Casting their shoes from off their feet and the world's iron-shod doubts from their understanding, these children of the faithful take their first step upon the holy ground with reverential awe, and advance almost with timidity, fearful, as the signs of Deity break upon them, lest they be brought face to face with the Almighty.

Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), p. 27
General sources

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

As quoted in Plain Mr. Jinnah : Selections from Quaid-e-Azam's Correspondence (1976)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 16.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:) Ich habe wieder nur Nummern gegeben. Ich bleibe bei meiner Idee, keine Titel zu geben. .. ..Titel sinds o widerlich romantisch, und jetz wird man in einiger Zeit hunderte Frühlings, Sommer, Bäume, an Liebknechts, Eberts und so weiter haben. Farbe und Linien haben für alle eine verschiedene eigene Sprache, die nicht im Titel festgelegt werden woll.
in a letter to Herwarth Walden, 14 Jan. 1920; as cited in the catalogue Der Sturm, Herwarth Walden und die Europäische Avantgarde, Berlin 1912-1932 Taschenbuch – 1961
Already in 1914 Jacoba started to number her paintings and drawings
1920's

In re Lashmar (1890), L. J. Rep. (N S.) 60 Ch. 146.

On avoiding titling an unfinished work in “Interview with Terrance Hayes” http://katonahpoetry.com/interviews/interview-terrance-hayes/ in the Katonah Poetry Series (2017 Sep 21)