Question

Which lines in this excerpt from act II of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet reveal that Mercutio thinks Romeo would be better off if he stopped thinking about love?
MERCUTIO: I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.

ROMEO: Nay, good goose, bite not.

MERCUTIO: Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting it is a most
sharp sauce.

ROMEO: And is it not well served in to a sweet goose?

MERCUTIO: O here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an
inch narrow to an ell broad!

ROMEO: I stretch it out for that word 'broad;' which added
to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.

MERCUTIO: Why, is not this better now than groaning for love?
now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art
thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature:
for this drivelling love is like a great natural,
that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.

BENVOLIO: Stop there, stop there.

MERCUTIO: Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.

BENVOLIO: Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.

MERCUTIO: O, thou art deceived; I would have made it short:
for I was come to the whole depth of my tale; and
meant, indeed, to occupy the argument no longer.

Answer 1

The lines from this excerpt from Act II, Scene IV, of "Romeo and Juliet", by William Shakespeare, that reveal that Mercutio thinks Romeo would be better off if he stopped thinking about love are:

"Why, is not this better now than groaning for love?

...to hide his bauble in a hole. "

Mercutio is saying that when Romeo is joking with his friends he is his true self, and he is better off than when he is groaning for love because when he is in love he acts like an idiot.

Answer 2

The lines that indicate that Mercutio believes Romeo would be better off if he stopped thinking about love are the following:

Why, is not this better now than groaning for love?

now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art

thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature:

for this drivelling love is like a great natural,

that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.

This is so because Mercutio is telling Romeo that when he is not thinking about love he is more sociable and he is being himself—“Now though art sociable, now thou art Romeo.”  And, he goes on to explain what love is doing to him is causing him not be himself—to be veiled by his constant preoccupation with it—because he is so consumed with it that “love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.”