promissory note

in a sentence

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.  (source) Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963

The company made nothing and sold nothing: It existed to hold assets and provide a reference for anyone who became skeptical of Holmes's promissory notes.†  (source) Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City, 2003

It became entangled with an effort to avoid being called into judgment; with a fear that their spiritual and social promissory notes might suddenly be called up.†  (source) James Baldwin, Another Country, 1960

Lee Harvey carries a promissory note from the U.S. embassy for $435.71 to help start his life anew in America.†  (source) Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, Killing Kennedy, 2012

As always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should get paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given them as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors.†  (source) Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1869

Cash, and we, Simeon and I, signed a promissory note.†  (source) John Grisham, Sycamore Row, 2014

But at no time of my life,' said Mr. Micawber, 'have I enjoyed a higher degree of satisfaction than in pouring my griefs (if I may describe difficulties, chiefly arising out of warrants of attorney and promissory notes at two and four months, by that word) into the bosom of my friend Copperfield.'†  (source) Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850

But you can't pay a promissory note which reads 'somewhere between one and one thousand pounds' — and starting a war is much more serious than paying a trifle of money.†  (source) Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, 1959

The books were imported; the library wag opened one day in the week for lending to the subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned.†  (source) Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 1791

Thus the promissory note which he had signed with a tube of toothpaste on that afternoon two months ago was recalled, the yet oblivious executor of it sitting wrapped in a clean horse blanket, small, shapeless, immobile, on the seat of a light buggy jolting through the December twilight up a frozen and rutted lane.†  (source) William Faulkner, Light in August, 1932

For howsoever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about bills and promissory notes than in any other form he wears.†  (source) Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853

For having made up his mind irrevocably that he would pay Mrs. Glegg her loan of five hundred pounds, it naturally occurred to him that he had a promissory note for three hundred pounds lent to his brother-in-law Moss; and if the said brother-in-law could manage to pay in the money within a given time, it would go far to lessen the fallacious air of inconvenience which Mr. Tulliver's spirited step might have worn in the eyes of weak people who require to know precisely how a thing is to be done before they are strongly confident that it will be easy.†  (source) George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 1860

He acquired high-grade furnishings from the Tobey Furniture Company, and crystal and ceramics from the French, Potter Crockery Company, and did so without paying a dime, though he recognized that soon the companies would attempt to collect on the promissory notes he had given them.†  (source) Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City, 2003