"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order"
About this Quote
That’s the subtext: chaos is the default setting, and “order” is something we manufacture to survive it. Woolf lived inside a century that made disorder feel historical, not merely personal: the aftershocks of Victorian certainty, the brutal arithmetic of World War I, the rising mechanization of life, the tightening conventions around women’s roles. Her modernism answers that with a radical proposal: if the world won’t provide meaning, the artist will, not by preaching but by arranging attention.
The line also hints at an ethical tension. Creative power “brings” the universe to order - which sounds like mastery, even domination. Woolf knew how seductive that can be: the author as god, the sentence as a net. Yet her work keeps exposing what resists capture: the flicker of sensation, the private grief, the social scripts that shape what can be said. So the “odd” becomes a warning as much as a marvel: the same imagination that clarifies can also impose.
It works because it’s compactly paradoxical: the mind creates, and creation makes the world feel created. Order is not discovered; it’s authored.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Woolf, Virginia. (2026, January 17). Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/odd-how-the-creative-power-at-once-brings-the-28332/
Chicago Style
Woolf, Virginia. "Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/odd-how-the-creative-power-at-once-brings-the-28332/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/odd-how-the-creative-power-at-once-brings-the-28332/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










