Tolstoy's writings were Gandhi's fundamental teacher...  
No Tolstoy?  No Gandhi.  
No Gandhi?  No MLK Jr (Gandhi was MLK Jr's teacher on nonviolence).  
Is this important?  Well, that depends on what you value.
Does the world, do your loved ones, need you to grow in strength as they did?

"A Calendar of Wisdom," and "Wise Thoughts for Every Day," both on this site, were the Personal Trainers created and  used by Tolstoy himself, to become the person he felt the world needed him to be, and for the Joy of it.

GANDHI ON TOLSTOY---------

From "The Essential Gandhi," Louis Fischer

[When] I was passing through a severe crisis of skepticism and doubt... I came across Tolstoy s book The Kingdom of God Is Within You, and was deeply impressed by it. I was at that time a believer in violence.

Its reading cured me of my skepticism and made me a firm believer in [non- violence]. What has appealed to me most in Tolstoy s life is that he practised what he preached and reckoned no cost too great in his pursuit of truth. . . .

He was the greatest apostle of non-violence the present age has produced. No one in the West before him or since has written and spoken on non-violence so fully or insistently and with such penetration and insight. . .

[His] remarkable development of this doctrine puts to shame the present-day narrow and lop-sided interpretation put upon it by the votaries of Ahimsa in this land of ours. . . . True Ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill will and anger and hate and an over flowing love for all. For inculcating this true and higher type of Ahimsa amongst us, Tolstoy s life with its oceanlike love should serve as a beacon light and a never-failing source of inspiration. . . .