poles apart

She mixed furniture with the same fatal profligacy as she mixed drinks, and this outrageous contact between things which were intended by Nature to be kept poles apart gave her an inexpressible thrill.

1935, George Goodchild, chapter 1, in Death on the Centre Court

As regards distance there is little to choose between them and until the recent diversions there was a marked similarity in their train services; but the resemblance ends there and in character the two lines are poles apart.

1960 February, R. C. Riley, “The London-Birmingham services - Past, Present and Future”, in Trains Illustrated, page 96

In a purely spiritual sense, the two are poles apart and without the material could never be brought together in a single entity.

1993, Aryeh Kaplan, Yaakov Elman, Israel ben Gedaliah Lipschutz, Immortality, resurrection, and the age of the universe: a kabbalistic view, page 31

At this level, science and magic are poles apart and yet they are the same.

2001, Karl Figlio, Psychoanalysis, science and masculinity, page 213