Moral Excellence

I was looking into “moral excellence” but that is harder to look up in a dictionary than the one word that was commonly used as meaning the same.  “Virtue.”  So I looked that up. Wikipedia had heaps.  “Virtue is moral excellence.”  Well yes.  Under Moral Excellence it said, Doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong.”  Then I looked up the Oxford dictionary which said “A quality considered morally good or desirable in a person”
Aristotle had a list of 12 virtues.  For Aristotle virtue equated to excellence at being human.
The Romans had more than 24 virtues.  They were qualities expected of Roman citizens that would be passed on from generation to generation.
In one sense it is like I am torturing myself.  I see so many good and honourable qualities and I see me.  Seeing glimpses of them and a real ability to fall short.  In so many ways it is contrary to my natural bent.  It has only been almost 65 years but I think I am getting better.
When I see the word virtue, I see its opposite in the word vice.  Yet in one sense I feel I can decide for myself what is moral excellence in that something may be right but not the right thing for that time
While I think there are definitely things to stay away from, I do think that sometimes virtue is not as cut and dry as it is made out to be.  It seems to me that sometimes the opposite of virtue is not vice but inaction.  There are times when I know to do the right thing and I chose to do nothing.  So I do neither the right or the wrong thing.  That to me is more cowardice than virtuous.   Though in reality not doing the right thing is to do the wrong thing.  Though for sure it is better to me to do nothing than to propagate the wrong thing.
What is best of all though is to do the right thing.  Yet it does seem to me that doing is born of being.  It is all too possible to come a cropper when stuff is done not because it is the way I am but because it is the way I want to be.
To me it is good to aspire as long as my motivation is not born of trying to live up to a certain standard by my own efforts, but my motivation comes from knowing I am doomed to failure unless I know it cannot be done without asking for help.
I know there are those that do the right thing and hats off to them.  Yet there are those that have no qualms about doing the wrong thing.  Misery is their legacy.
To me it is a biggy.  I do not want that SAS types are the only ones destined to succeed - and the rest are destined only to be also rans.  It matters to me that I and Joe Blow down the road can succeed in moral excellence.  Not because we have a perceived exceptional moral strength, but because we are connected to one who does.