James Joyce. Ulysses (№ 436328)

If he smiled, what would he smile at? Thoughts that each one who penetrates thinks that he has penetrated first, while he is only the last member in a series of antecedents, even if he is the first in a series of successors, and that each imagines that he is the first, the last, and the one and only, then as he is not the first, not the last and not the only one in a series that begins at infinity and continues to infinity.