After my building changed owners, they started using a different lease.  I read through it this weekend, and my favorite representative clause really has to be this one:

1.3.  The pet will be an ordinary house pet.  Ordinary house pets include cats.

That’s just an amazingly gratuitous use of legal sentence constructs to say, in the end, “You can have a cat.”

I also haven’t figured out this one, though Google suggests it’s a standard clause in many leases:

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.  Time is of the essence of this Lease and each and all of its provisions.

The way that phrase is used in casual conversation, I feel like I’m being told if I don’t sign the lease quickly someone will die.