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1) "The Middle Ages not only produced illuminated books, but also eyeglasses, not only the cathedral, but also the coal mine. Revolutionary changes occurred in both primary industry and manufacturing. The first recorded instance of mass production---of horseshoes---occurred during the Middle Ages. Between the tenth and the thirteenth century, a technological boom produced the mechanical clock, the suction pump, the horizontal loom, the waterwheel, the windmill, and even, on both shores of the English Channel, the tidal mill. Agricultural innovations formed the economic foundation for all this technical activity. The deep plow and the idea of crop rotation increased productivity as much as fourfold, so that agricultural yields in the thirteenth century would not be surpassed for another five hundred years. Far from being a technological Black Hole, the Middle Ages marked the authentic beginning of industrialization in Europe. The period's influence was felt until at least the eighteenth century in all aspects of everyday life, including attitudes towards the home."

2) "There was little differentiation between utility and ceremony. Simple functions, like washing the hands, acquired ceremonial forms, and ceremonies like breaking bread were performed unself-consciously as a natural part of life. The emphasis that the Middle Ages placed on ceremony underlines what John Lukacs has called the external character of medieval civilization. What mattered then was the external world, and one's place in it. Life was a public affair, and just as one did not have a strongly developed self-consciousness, one did not have a room of one's own. It was the medieval mind, not the absence of comfortable chairs or central heating, that explains the austerity of the medieval home. It is not so much that in the Middle Ages comfort was unknown, as Walter Scott would have it, but rather that it was not needed."

3) "I have called the modern interior 'a rupture in the evolution of domestic comfort.' It represents an attempt not so much to introduce a new style---that is the least of it---as to change social habits, and even to alter the underlying cultural meaning of domestic comfort. Its denial of bourgeois traditions has caused it to question, and reject, not only luxury but also ease, not only clutter but also intimacy. Its emphasis on space has caused it to ignore privacy, just as its interest in industrial-looking materials and objects has led it away from domesticity. Austerity, both visual and tactile, has replaced delight. What started as an endeavor to rationalize and simplify has become a wrong-headed crusade; not, as is often claimed, a response to a changing world, but an attempt to change the way we live. It is a rupture not because it does away with period styles, not because it eliminates ornament, and not because it stresses technology, but because it attacks the very idea of comfort itself. That is why people look to the past. Their nostalgia is not the result of an interest in archaeology, like some Victorian revivals, nor of a sympathy for a particular period, like Jeffersonian classicism. Nor is it a rejection of technology. People appreciate the benefits of central heating and electric lighting, but the rooms of a Colonial country home or of a Georgian mansion---which had neither---continue to attract them, for they provide a measure of something that is absent from the modern interior. People turn to the past because they are looking for something that they do not find in the present---comfort and well-being."

4) "Can we really have coziness and robots?"