Konstantin Leontiev about his conversion to Orthodoxy, from a letter to V.V. Rozanov

In the summer of 1871, when in Thessaloniki, lying on a sofa in fear of unexpected death (from a severe attack of cholera), I looked at the image of the Mother of God (just brought to me by a monk from Athos), I could not yet foresee anything of this,and all my literary plans were still very vague. I was thinking at that moment not about the salvation of my soul (for faith in a Personal God had long come to me much more easily than faith in my own immortality), I, usually not at all fearful, was horrified simply at the thought of bodily death, and, being already prepared in advance by a whole series of other psychological transformations, sympathies and aversions, I suddenly, in one minute, believed in the existence and power of this Mother of God; he believed so tangibly and firmly, as if he saw before him a living, familiar, real woman, very kind and very powerful, and exclaimed: “Mother of God! Early! It is too early for me to die!.. I have not yet done anything worthy of my abilities and have led an extremely depraved, subtly sinful life! Lift me up from this death bed. I will go to Athos, bow to the elders,

- Konstantin Leontiev about his conversion to Orthodoxy, from a letter to V.V. Rozanov