And though the second man's eyes have been opened to the fleeting nature of the pleasures of sin, and he has taken steps to create new, real, lasting life for himself, we see in his story the destructive power of past sins to reach into a man's future, destroy any goodness it finds there, and drag him back by his own lusts. (firstthings.com)
Whitehead differs from Sartre, though, in acknowledging the persuasive power of the past — the past influences, even if it does not determine, the present.) (religion-online.org)
On our journey we observe power of the past in Catherine and Peter the Greats, literary giants like Alexander Pushkin, as well as later overseers of the Hermitage in Boris Piotrovsky and current director Mikhail Piotrovsky, all within the same time and space. (ioncinema.com)