Here's a precursor to "No means no."  The caption reads, "'Does that mean, No?' Mr. Henley called after him."  From Blind Love by Wilkie Collins and illustrated by A. Forestier, 1890.

We commonly use Latin words, known as Lorem Ipsum, as dummy text, but back in the day, simple chicken scratch sufficed.  Our illustration appears in The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems of William Shakspere, 1851.

From Stories for the Household by Hans Christian Andersen, 1889

Dictionary.com traces the expression "to have a monkey on one's back" to 1930s narcotics slang, but we can do ever-so-much better with this illustration from Old and New London by Walter Thornbury, 1873.

From Captain Marryat's Novels, 1896.

It's only funny if the black cat laughs, from The Ottowan, 1914.

"A Gray Mystery": an illustration from an 1887 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

"The American Laocoön," from The Comic History of the United States by John D. Sherwood, 1870.

From Up Ewig Ungedeelt by Detlev von Liliencron, 1898.

"And when the blind and never ceasing rains / Attack all day the castle window-panes," from Dunvegan Castle by Harold Steward Rathbone, 1900.

From Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

"The mysterious idol killed him," from The Adventures of a Stowaway by Frederick Whishaw, 1897.

"In the storm," from The Seat of Empire by Charles Carleton Coffin, 1870.

"And went on weaving her enchanted web of fairy tissue," from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott and illustrated by Frederick Pegram, 1898.

"Combat between the man of the earth and the man of the sea," from Peru: Incidents of Ravel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas by Ephraim George Squire, 1877.

If it's true that "it is not we who guide the unfolding of the game of experience; it is experience that leads us; our task is that of corresponding to such continuous opening of truth" (Between Nihilism and Politics, 2010), then we humbly suggest the only way to meet that task is to employ a continuous doorway (as seen in The Southern Planter, 1882).

From La Vuelta al Mundo; Viajes Interesantes y Novísimos Por Todos los Países con Grabados Por los Mejores Artistas, 1864.