Such is the unity of all history that any one who endeavors to tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seamless web.

F. W. Maitland (1850-1906) English legal historian and jurist [Frederic William Maitland]
“A Prologue to a History of English Law,” Law Quarterly Review (Jan 1898)
    (Source)

Prologue to the 2nd ed. of his and Pollock's History of English Law (1898). Frequently mis-paraphrased, "The law is a seamless web."